72 SEALS FROM THE LESSER KEY OF SOLOMON[2,048 1,519 PX.]

72 SEALS FROM THE LESSER KEY OF SOLOMON [2,048 × 1,519 PX.]

whenever i get sad that i don’t have friends to worship and do rituals with, I remember that birds sing love songs into the sky everyday, and the grass dances in the wind when it blows. And the clouds blush at the sunset, and the wind whistles tunes, and the bees hum, and the deer trot. And then I remember that the river runs, and the flowers open themselves to the sun, and the bugs sleep on warm leaves. and as I walk and pray, perhaps the rabbits nibbling on shrubs are praying too, perhaps that’s why the spider spun her web so beautifully. and then I remember that I’m not worshipping alone. I never was.

Secrets accumulate atop my tongue, making beds in rooftop ridges and gap teeth.

After dinner I spit them out, all blue and crazed in a bathroom sink on another Sunday.

A girl prays to a god she feels unworthy to be loved by-

anything, or everything, or nothing at all

It is the wonder every September:

I feel her heart beat again.

My feet

thump,

thump,

thumping atop gravel.

"Listen," she says.

"Do you hear that?

Do you feel that?"

I try.

I stretch my arms down a drain,

frantically searching for the means to scream, to be anything, or everything, or nothing at all.

I tried honey—

scooping her out,

desperate and stretched,

goop thickening the walls,

syrup-like and sorry for making everything worse

much worse than ever before.

I give up.

I follow the ant trail to a sad pillow,

heating up the center where agony breaks free.

I follow the ant trail to therapy every Monday at 11, and say much yet nothing at all.

I follow the ant trail to the walls I wish I’d step outside of.

I try honey once more.

I shower it over myself in hopes the thing inside is able to thin it out in time,

like tea on an anxious Tuesday.

But my sisters are perhaps weary of what clings to their shoes,

of hands stuck upon doorknobs and kitchen sinks and Wednesday’s dinner engulfed in goop.

I follow it to a mirror.

I am frightened to believe what I have become.

I run to the supermarket and make a mountain of salt in aisle 24,

hoping to counteract the monstrous situation upon me,

smothered in the taste of all the things I needed to say,

in the sour shame coming back home all the same

My god!

on old clocks, windowsills, light switches, and more pillows, cold pillows on lone Thursdays,

Forget the mirrors!

I must not look at myself

slugging around and destroying a home I’ve made none but my own.

Oh but

She is in picture frames,

Lovely and light and easy to hold

behind glass, handled with care.

Pity is dreaded fear, a pungent knock I want to ignore every time.

I weep onto the smile, the what-was, a known.

I try once more,

stretching myself down the drain,

uncertainty a growing depression—a well-known symptom of a heart beating faintly on Friday, under layers of each day before.

She is somewhere in the hollow parts,

in the shadow dancing on the edge of what lives outside,

in the music sticking onto a seen but unexperienced.

Saturday, I am the soles of hurried feet,

thump, thump, thumping like knocking—a thunderous prayer possibly heard.

I follow it to my mother’s voice,

and my father’s wisdom,

and my sisters' cheers—

shoes kept neatly in spaces just for me.

Is she worthy of love?

My god!

Is she!?

To follow the ant trail to the old town lived once before-

She is there!

I feel her heart beat again,

trying to be

anything,

or everything,

or nothing at all.

My heart,

the center where agony breaks free!?

Do you hear it?

Do you feel it?

Thump,

thump,

thumping atop gravel.

An ant trail follows me down to

the places that consume me.

She tastes the sweet outpour of will,

or anything, or everything, or nothing at all.

A girl prays to god, on a Sunday-

Thump,

thump,

thumping..

Do you hear me?

Ten of Swords. Art by Timothy Von Rueden.