The Past Pulls Close

Nothing in this whole wide world is ever over.

I’ve got a beer sitting out for any Ancestors who want to stop by and a fire to keep the darkness at bay.

This is it, the darkest plunge into the deepest night. There will be colder nights, but none so long, not until we swing around to this position again, the spiral ever twisting–the moon around us, we around the sun, the sun in its arm of a twirling galaxy.

We have not been here before. And yet, we keep coming back here.

Have a drink, my old gone friends. Come on out, into the light. As Gillians says, let me see the mark death made. And I will show you the scars on my body in return.

I tell the same story over and over again. And always I put myself in the middle of it. So angry at the betrayal of Paradise. Still holding out hope I’ll find a comfortable way in.

Always ready to fuck over the people who have been so good to me for the brief affections of those who have fucked me over.

Spinning, spinning.  Waiting, knocking.

And who waits at my door? Who knocks to be let in?

I really hate this time of year. It just feels like grief–stale and fresh. And I wonder when it happened. I wonder what, exactly, it is. And I can’t say. Only that I recognize that it’s gone.

I miss those folks so much sometimes that it takes my breath away. Who knew me like they did?

And yet, it was me who let go. It’s always me who lets go. The dance ends, the partners switch and I am gone.

Spinning. Slipping. Gone.

Until we’re back again, in the longest night. Me and my dead things, waiting.

Trying to make peace.