Parched to Perfect

Cooler mornings leaning into hot days.

Summer tinged with what is to come. Autumn breathes on the back of my neck. This late day and these fleeting hours. My feet are in the dirt. My face in the sun. This hunger. This desperate joy.

To get to the water – my great purifier – symbolic and elemental – my altar. The old is washed away and the new is blessed. How it touches everything! Liquid innocence, a place of surrender.

I remember her: bare-breasted, hard-nippled, underwater. Sun touched the shadowy parts because she allowed it. She drank from parched to perfect. How desire is prayer, Lake Girl. When the patriarchal gods spoke, I let her drown. Now this penance. Now this way of being reborn. “All witches have secrets”, lovely man.

Reading Lorde and falling in love again. I see man's treachery in her words. I see the way women were raised to fear the deepest, sensual part of themselves. She calls my “yes” forward. I have much to share.

Instead I ache.