Elisabeth Writing

This is a piece I thought up when I was remembering one particular event that shaped my life, and then I thought of a few other times that changed the path I was on – for the good and for the bad. But in the end I’m proud of the woman I’ve become and the journey that has taken me there. I only regret hurting the people I love, and not being able to save my father. The other times? I’m not sure I would change them. But … here are my thoughts and the major things that made me who I am.

Sometimes I think about those nights that changed my life. I stare up at my ceiling, fuzzy with darkness and ennui, and I wonder. My spirit stretches to astral realms and parallel worlds, to where another version of myself sits in willow branches and writes letters to the stars. She’s whispering her confessions to the Flower Moon, somber and sentimental at once, but I cannot hear her. I wonder if she’s talking about you.

I am a girl, only 19, when the world caves in around me. My father is sick. He has cancer, and it’s already stage 4. The words buzz like bees in my ear, circling around and stinging my ear drums, until I can feel the blood drip drip drip like an endless monologue of pain. I run to the playground to pretend I am once again a child. If I swing high enough, will I ascend to new heights? If I roar loud enough, will the gods hear me and grant my desire to heal him? If I weep into the trunks of the trees I have grown to know and love so well, will they grant me magick? Instead, I break my sobriety pact this night. I take the bottle they give me and drink until I am numb to the pain of my cuts and bruises. I drank until I became someone else. I drink until I fall and scrape my knees. A blood sacrifice that doesn’t work. It is too late. But what would have happened if the news had been different? What if, in another world, he’d never gotten sick at all? What if, instead of this labyrinth of grief I find myself lost in, I could call my father on the phone to talk about the demolition of a once beautiful home? What if I could make him his favorite apple cake and sit with my whole family on the porch, watching the sky light up with lightning? What if I could call him and hear his voice? What if…?

It’s been a few years since the world imploded, since my father won the battle with cancer but paid a huge price. It’s been a few years since he fell from the Tower and emerged, blinded and skeletal, aching for the time before. It’s been a few years since my innocence shattered once, and then once more, by two different men. One father, and one disease. One faux friend, and one flower peeled back into nothing but a dark void. The masked antagonist plucked, silenced my screams against the palm of his hand. What made it so easy for those men to tear me into bits and pieces for their own satisfaction? Why did they search for jewels and treasure and, finding only gardens and sunflowers, tore and burned them down? What if those men had never met me? What if they’d never taken, taken, taken? Who would I be now? I can’t think about this often. It hurts too much. 

I’m older now, and maybe a little wiser. I’m sober and I don’t miss the taste of whiskey (too often). I’ve been learning to dance with wyverns in skies lit with lightning. I pore over journals with a wistful heart, and I paint watercolor phoenixes as a mark of my own death, my own rebirth. Tonight I’m wallowing under a moon with tails and teeth, wondering if star-trees will fall at my feet. My tears are soaking the poetry I’ve written tonight, until it crumples and streaks into my palms. I faced jungle eyes and was mute. I felt my hunger and pretended that I liked the feeling of starving. I did not give him my truth, I did not tell him about the peonies in my rib cage, I did not confess my secret and childish wishes. What would have happened if I had? Recipes scrawled in the margins of books, leaded glass windows spilling light and wisteria, dances in rose gold dresses and a halo of flowers on dark and light hair; a manifesto of love. Maybe… 

My truck is packed with knickknacks and candles, endless leather bound diaries and cheap spiral journals, heart shaped sunglasses and crimson lipstick. Is this all that’s left of a life we lived? The ensemble that looks like pale starlight, crystal buds and faerie wing threads, is tucked away so that I can’t see it. I wish it would rot in some kind of magical pit of regrets, and at the same time I wish I could wear it and be there again, under the arbor by the woods, with your hands in mine and laughter like whiskey and ruination on my tongue. Was it only a few months ago that we shared a spicy cake and celebrated ribbon bindings? What the hell am I doing? Why am I saying goodbye? I look like a woman, but I feel like that little girl without a night light, asking for stories about pixies and princes. Perhaps I never felt good enough for a pure kind of love. Perhaps I’ve forgotten who I am. Perhaps I need to leave and find those pieces of myself on every highway I’ve traveled since then, in every tree that snagged a piece of my soul in its branches, in every man that loved me. In every man that broke my bones and made me scream. But right now, I don’t know any of this. I only know that those light blue green eyes are tilted with sorrow, and tears are burning in the back of my throat. I only see him in my rearview, a wolf in rocker clothing, until he is blurred by miles and tears. I wonder what might have happened if I’d turned to my Fey guides and my Patrons before the massacre of my mind, body and soul? I wonder what would have happened if it hadn’t always been so easy for me to say goodbye. 

In February of 2019, my father leaves us. We say our final goodbyes as the sun rises over the ocean, and toss shells, where we had written messages to him, into the waves. My grief ages me. I howl and beg. I age, die, and become a child again. After I assemble the pieces of myself into some semblance of who I once was, I seek comfort in whatever – in whoever – I can find it. My mother and I move into the mountains of Western North Carolina, seeking escape and solace. Instead, I find him. I’ll never forget this night. I order a green smoothie at the cafe and nervously twirl my hair when he walks in. Time stills. Freezes. It’s only him, with his tousled auburn curls and his darkened eyes, sandals and cargo shorts. The room fades around him, fuzzy, until he is all I can see. I feel a bolt of gilded lightning strike me in the chest and I know him. And thereafter our (doomed) romance began: Juliet and Romeo, Lancelot and Guinevere, Catherine and Heathcliff. Love and hate in equal measure, screaming at one another in snowy silence, coming together like thunder and adoration, faltering when light green and dark green eyes fill again with loathing. I push, he pulls. He pushes, I pull. They didn’t warn me about the razor blades in the apple he gave to me, with that soft smile. I might have committed crimes for those dimples to peek out just one more time. They didn’t tell him that to eat my oleander petal skin would poison him – so so so slowly. They didn’t tell him that I’m his heroin and his goddamn kryptonite. Months with no talking, and then dozens of letters filled with longing and rose petals. Sometimes I can still feel those blades in my solar plexus, next to the false blooms he hid in my journals, and it feels like I can’t breathe. Would one more kiss save me? No. It would doom me. And probably him, too. I swear to god, quitting him is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. What would have happened if I hadn’t? I think I might have died, of ecstasy and agony. I think he might have, too. Two coffins, black and pink roses, and grief is all I could see.

My friend drove away from me that day. It’s spring and the magnolia trees are spilling blossoms into our parted lips. I see in your eyes that you have to say goodbye, that your angry words come from pain and not hate. When you crashed your car into that tree,I panicked. A world without you didn’t make sense. It wasn’t one I wanted to live in. I remember bathing you in your tub when you came home from the hospital, using the sponge to gently wash your back, rubbing shampoo into your dark locks. I remember taking care of you, the way you’d always taken care of me. I remember my overflowing peony heart in your hands. I remember sobbing into your chest as you held onto me with your scarred arms and blackened eyes. I don’t blame you for lighting this kindling, for building the fire of what we’d become, for turning from love to hate. But I miss you. Every fucking day. I wonder what would have happened…I wonder what I might have done differently… I wonder about all of it, I wonder about you, often these days. 

It’s Beltane. I’m wearing blush silk and white lace. My altar is filled with rose quartz, selenite, Venus, Cernunnos, Fey coins and velvet. I lose myself in the dancing flames of their candlelight and enchantment. I make an oath to never lose Them – or myself – again. And my laughter, now, is like elysium and aphrodisiacs. I am the earth digging roots into the soul, energy coursing through my body and through Gaia herself. I am the water that runs in rivers through my body and through hers, blue or green or brown. I am the air that I need for life and the wind that ruffles delicate butterfly wings. I am the purifying flame within the pupils of my eyes, and the wildfires that burn and create. I am a faerie-love goddess-witch, and no one can ever make me forget this. I’ll make blood pacts to never forget this woman that I am, ever again. I know what happens this time. I know, because I’ve lost her. I’ve lost me. What happened? Bourbon in my stomach blurring my mind and eyes; deep wounds to my body and soul, and I drink to burn it away, to forget; saying goodbye to many good men, the ones I hurt because I didn’t know how to love without giving and receiving pain; becoming a shell and a husk, empty smile and faltering irises, in pink lipgloss and tight skirts; scars, so many scars; becoming the witch and the monster and the wolf, hunting, blood stained teeth; nearly selling my loveless soul. I don’t have to wonder about that. 

I write this to remember how far I’ve come, and how far I’ve yet to go.

I write this to apologize and to heal. 

I write this to find love that doesn’t ache. 

I write this to show you that my life doesn’t come without regrets. 

I write this to smile, and to remember, and to move into the next sunrise with hope, with the knowledge of the faerie woman I really am. The woman I’ve always been.