Ceridwen
That was a very long death this time. I guess I needed to see the ladle in Her hand to get the point, because seeing Her sickle in the sky and greeting Her means something.
I forget. I forget life while in death. I forget the light in the darkness, just as I forget the darkness in light, forget death in life. I forgot what I’d said.
The first night, collapse. A death in life. Myself everyone, myself their desires and fears, myself so fluid that I spilled upon the floor with my tea. And then the remembering why we need to forget to survive. Life is the death of the eternal, death is its birth. I remember, I forget.
I’d said yes, huh? I forgot.
Arianrhod
“See?” said a midwife. “Her stars.”
In a vast field in a vast darkness, standing under that sea in which one day I’ll drown, a kind of death and all kinds of life.
A year ago I stared at those same stars and soaked the dry earth with tears, shuddering in terror at what would come, knowing the only answer I could possibly give, knowing how long that light had traveled to get here.
Brighid
Desire again, and I’m always so surprised how much She’s there, too.
I’d been staring for awhile, I guess, until she asked, “what are you staring at?”
My reflection in the bottom of a twenty-gallon cauldron, I forgot to say.
I’d dreamt and forgot. In a barn between desire and desired, I was making food. Here in a barn hauling a steel cauldron to a hearth, between desired and desire, I was making food. For Her, for them, before the fire came.
I know Her laughter so well now I’m finally beginning to laugh with Her.
Bran
Oh, You. Standing at the gate, great king, straddling a river. Started with a mistake with a cauldron. These things happen, I’ve heard.
Wasted land, blasted. How it is within reach but cannot be grasped. What he showed me, what I keep failing to get. What else I was shown and cannot understand.
I’ll get this part, I’m certain. Carry your banner, perhaps, talk to skulls, ford another river for others and probably not drown.
The most present. The least speaking. Black-wings everywhere, those who guard the living, those who guard the dead, those dead and living who guard each other, and “this is not your death,” You say, and now I nod in assent.
Dionysos
And oh, hi! You come back fucking hard, You know, and I with You.
Surrounded by women who were men, naked on a bed, wrestling with a woman who was man and is perhaps again, but also a woman, and I am also a woman and a man and oh, that music was absurd and You’re quite damn fucking funny with that stuff, You know.
It all wends and weaves back. I without more wine beyond sweat and that seemed enough. Re-threaded from desire into desire, and it’s all more than enough, and–
This one?
Fuck yes.
Rhyd Wildermuth 