I wanted to close the year out with this letter to myself, written for my thirtieth birthday. There’re direct references to the music videos for Snoh Aalegra’s Whoa, Michaela Jaé’s Something to Say, and Ari Lennox’s Up Late. My go-to tarot deck is Cedar McCloud’s Numinous Tarot, so if you want to imagine the queen of cups, that’s the one I think of. Cross-posted to IG.
I keep coming back to the state of my heart:
Rachel asked long ago, how is your heart;
Denise asked a few years later;
and last week Audra asked me the same thing.
These are small sign-posts in the path my heart has traversed:
when I fell in love, when my heart opened like a flower to the sun;
when at last I held the weight of all my sorrow and let it go – KonMari style;
and two weeks ago I moved from my home of seven years to somewhere new.
Old ways won’t open new doors, the instagram post advises.
New home, new front door, new bedroom door.
What portal do I pass through moving from one house to the next?
What do I claim here, in making this strange place
a home?
I have been single for three years, and there has been a lot in me that has changed:
I am at home in my body, I am present in my body and my feelings, my pleasure comes
lightning quick! And I want to know what my body has learned, what my body has
transfigured. Can you see it, can I feel it, when I dance, when I come apart, when I move.
Romance and sex color relationships in different ways,
a certain slant of light, like driving at night or walking beneath the moonlight.
There are certain things I cannot do alone.
I make magic on my own, and so do you, and you.
I want to know what happens when we fold our hands together.
There are three sides of a triangle, there is strength in numbers.
There is magic
in collaboration and I want to know what grows when we find the magic
of this moment, that can only be made when me, you, and you are here.
I build friendships like people do romantic ones,
I build foundations for redwood cathedrals, I want someone
with me throughout the long years of tending to this grove.
I want to make this a home with you,
to go home to you, to be who you come home to.
And I want to find a harbor for the fierce way I love, my heart sinking its teeth in,
and refusing to let go. When I wonder what it is I give to you, you simply say,
You, I get you. Your brilliant mind, your sharp tongue, the soft give of your body,
letting it come to rest in my hands is the best gift of all.
With forty minutes to midnight, here is a spell:
I want to be read to in bubble baths, loved like whoa;
crown me with love, and I will cape you in flowers, because I’ve got something to say;
and rolling green hills, my oldest dream of all, that keeps me up late.
If there is a longing in my heart,
there is no use denying it.
There is only submitting to it,
letting its water wash over me,
and moving with the tide,
and learning to breathe with it
once again.
Oh magic of my heart, queen of cups,
distill the longing of my heart into a single drink,
let me down it, and no longer deny
here is what I long for,
here is what I yearn for,
let me tell you,
and in the telling,
I call it to me,
I call it to me,
oh heart of mine,
oh heart of mine.
Esther O. Lee 