Dear Millie, dear Matt, dear Noah, dear Colleen and Nick,
The underwear I wore the night I first had sex is in a box with all the other objects relevant to that relationship. My first two boyfriends ended up getting an Egyptian style burial when we broke up, in two wooden boxes obsessively collaged on the outside and filled with small artifacts from our time together. Both relationships had very unceremonial endings, not uncommon in adolescent relationships. Fire hot and then top notch vagueness.
Last night we sat on a stoop with candles dripping onto raw carrots. So many things have ended between the time we meet and where we are now. We have left jobs, cities, friendships, one another.. and yet here we are marking Matt’s birthday like we are in our early twenties in Pilsen, like some things never change but the little haunting between us all as we sit, is that they do change and will continue to change. Time is like that, a real bully but also a trickster, winking us back into another time
for a time.
I am in the slow process of creating another Ritual Map, for a ceremony to honor the end of relationships. How we end is as important as how we begin.. And yet so often there is so much attention given to the start,
especially in love, but in many things
So often things end and it’s only when they are long gone
that I notice they are no longer there
I had a photo taken of my belly last week
one year after my babies were removed from it
I have a thin white line, a scar
My doula called it a window
They entered through a window
Instead of the door
I am always looking to see how to mark time
To honor what is and what was
A scar is helpful
But sometimes there is nothing to point to
Nothing to take a photo of
But time, the trickster, is always offering up ways
To be with what was.
xo
g
