thewitchofnovember

[thewitchofnovember]

During my first month with my therapist, I was given this worksheet to read and work on. She noticed that while I was talking with her, that my thoughts followed a lot of these. I wasn’t aware that my anxiety had brought me down paths of low self-worth and stinky thinking.  After a couple of weeks of talking with her, she gave me this worksheet to work on. 

While, at first, I thought these weren’t going to work out, I was very surprised to see just how easy they were to use . My homework at that time was to identify which sort of thinking I used on the regular and which ones would best challenge them for me. So, what do you think? Do any of the maladaptive thinking patterns sound like you? which ways would you like to untwist your thinking? 

[thewitchofnovember]

franz wright, “to myself” / marie howe, “the gate” / mary karr, “the voice of god”

[thewitchofnovember]

hunted by the narrative

hares on the mountain, traditional folk song // art by jen mazza

sparrow for a heart, abigal lappell // art by barbara bokoto-tomala

newcastle, traditional folk song // artist unknown

if i was a painter, lisa o'neill // art by claudia barbu

ashamed, deer tick // art by nicolas samori

i wish my baby was born, traditional folk song // artist unknown

hard wired, shakey graves // art by miles johnston

[thewitchofnovember]

Anne Bachelier

[thewitchofnovember]

I take all the love

I would have given a man

And put it inside of you

I watch your face in the morning

When you have just risen

And sleep sticks to the corners of your face

I make you dinner

And buy you coffee when you are tired

I cook in your kitchen

You give me clothes

And I wear them just to see you smile

As if you are happy to have marked me

You call me to say that you are bored

And you want my company

Just to lay together in bed and talk

I have no desire to touch you

At least not the way a lover would

No hands reaching into holes

Instead you let me roll your dreads

And kiss me softly on my cheek

Or sleep beside you, limbs brushing

You come to me and tell me

All the places you want us to live

To buy a house and raise our children

There are no secrets between us

No reason to hide any part

As of there would ever be a reason to turn away

We have carried each other

Through sickness and health

Through joys and sorrows

Stayed through the years

And the lovers and the pain

Hands clutching tight

As if to say

I can live through this

If only you will stay

[thewitchofnovember]

After an Unattended Funeral

Your phone sits silent through the days to come.

The cords and wires criss-crossing their way into the outside world hold no secret code.

In your mind only do they reach out across the years.

The spectre of a lover floats against your ceiling.

He splashes in the bath and turns up his nose at your tea.

The books on your shelves show up in strange places and your newspaper is unfolded.

You do not really mind his company; it is all you have.

[thewitchofnovember]

Speaking of Love

When I speak of love-

When I say to you, that the only sacrament left to us is love

    and that I love you down to the bone-

This is what I mean.

I mean the moment I step into the warm house from the snowy night, boots on my feet and a  red scarf around my neck,

and someone is standing at the stove cooking supper and someone is sitting at the table nursing a baby and someone across from them is folding the laundry I left in the dryer the night before,

and the children are running up and down the stairs shrieking their joy and everyone pauses to greet me, to kiss my face or clutch my hand

and the entirety of me is joy-

I mean

              the feeling of a child I did not birth, the warm animal weight

    of their body wrapped in my arms-

              mouth damp and sticky against my neck while

  their legs fall against my hips beating out the drum of their heart

                                                                                                 -I mean

                           Meeting your eyes decades after we meet

                           After we are no longer leaders of anything

                           After we have wept and suffered and grown into dignity

                           After the children we cared for are gone

                           After the only charge left to us is each other

                           Knowing that there is nothing

                                      to keep the soft ridge of your mouth from pressing very carefully against the soft ridge of my mouth and

                                -if we liked-

                                      we could stay like that until one of us departed.

I mean -

          If you were to die before me I would shake with jealousy

           because for years and years I had only to meet your gaze across the crowded room to know that I had possessed you

                            as fully as any one person can possess the body of another

and now, suddenly, you have been taken from me and i can no longer say,

                    “look, look at that man. isn’t he perfect? he’s mine you know, he told me so himself.”

[thewitchofnovember]

love after the apocalypse

You still wake up in the morning and drink coffee.

Your feet still hit the floor, same as they did before.

You still close the window, drawing tight the curtain against the blistering morning sun.

You still walk down the stairs, holding tight the painted banister as you pass the faces of the dead, no longer forgotten.

You still set the kettle to boil and slip out into the dew to tend the garden.

You still bring in the harvest, peas and berries and lettuce and eggs cradled gently in your pinned up skirt.

You still wash your feet, cradled tenderly in your own two hands as you gently wipe away the early morning dirt.

You still pour yourself a cup, watching the steam waft up to the sleeping children above.

You still sit and sip, shuffling the cards and watching them fall, a tower here, the devil there, but never again the lovers.

You still wake up in the morning and drink coffee.

[thewitchofnovember]

thoughts on lolita from a woman

i.you say that lolita is your favorite novel

   ...because its a beautiful piece of literature.

  because girl child thighs in stockings are the height of literary sophistication.

  because you’ve never been thirteen with a grown man preeeeessssed

      up next to you on the bus and then his hand is touching your tit.

                                    (never mind that the old man in front of you has bigger

                                        boobs than you do)

because the image of a grown man’s hand up a little girl’s cunt

   ...well that’s only proactive in the intellectual sense. Purely Academic.

because you’re a white boy who has been taking and taking and taking

   but never taken from.

because you can afford to have some softcore pedophilia porn

    as your favorite novel, you’ll never be raped by a man before you menstruate.

ii. just in case no has ever told you this,

                                life is not performance art.

      you don’t get brownie points for shock value and so maybe,

                                     just maybe.

 you could try to be a half-way decent human being? for the rest of us?

                  i know its hard but here. look.

 read some alice walker. read meridian.

                 pause, consider your place in the world.

read speak if you’re so interested in teen age girls.

                    consider it a chance for personal growth.

read some amy tan. i mean honestly the gaps in your literary education are appalling.

           picture a girl and her rapist/husband-you wont actually puke from it

read beloved. the book that is.

                its okay to cry, in fact if you don't then there's no hope for you

 do you get it yet? do you feel that powerlessness in your chest?

                     of course not you're a man but really, honestly, do you totally lack.... a heart? a sense of empathy? some fucking respect?

iii. is lolita still your favorite novel?

[thewitchofnovember]

Epitaphs of the Mind

Regulus/Severus; M; canon character death; off screen violence; angst.

His fingers under your shoulders are quiet. He is not gently scratching your shoulder blades or playing a minuet down your spine. Instead his hands lay quietly, an unexpected gift. His hair under your chin is down smooth and inky like your own. You are twins, mirror images in the only way that truly matters.

 You don’t ask where he goes on those nights. You lay corpse stiff in his bed and listen as the door opens and he rises, careful not to wake you. You listen to the wardrobe creak and the door click shut, following his path in your mind. You wish always to go ahead of him, to ensure that he is never less than perfectly safe.

 He is only a year younger then you but seems at times so fragile that you forget just what he is. He is a wizard, adapt and powerful. He is a Slytherin, cunning and quick. He is a Black, deadly and ruthless. When he is in your company he is none of these things. Instead he is the boy who can charm thestrals and finds spells that leave spirits inside a person’s eyes. He is the star that shines even when others do not, your own prince.

 He pulls you into the library and still does not speak. He has not uttered a word since he pushed you into the circle. You can still taste the last vestiges of fear on the back of your tongue, oily and sweet. He was steady next to you the entire time but even that brought only a little comfort. Now his hands dig into your skin as you fumble into the shelves. You see that he is still not wholly yours but becoming more so with each passing second. It feels like something akin to love, watching your name bloom on his lips.

 You are strongest when you are next to him. It is unspoken knowledge now that the two of you are a team and whenever one is sent on a mission the other is beside him. You, in your most private hours, know that you feed off of each other, catching the madness and passing it back. It is not hard to curse and maim and even kill, not while he is beside you. You are immortal together and not even the Dark Lord can tame you entirely.

 You are a quiet boy in a way that makes others uncomfortable instead of impressing your good manners upon them. He likes to run fingers over your lips, catching up every stray syllable that drops down. When you look at him after-after you both roll over and pull up the covers, after you return to the underground kitchen and take off bloody cloaks, but mostly after you fling down that last curse-you see only his need for your words. Not to silence you or hurt you but only to possess you, fully and without remorse.

 You cannot feel him now. He is no longer the hot breath in your lungs. He is not the hand on your back. He is not the voice in your ear late at night. He is only gone, an absence that hurts far more than any you have felt before. At times it feels as if you could die under the strain of it but you only press on, emerging out of your sorrow harder and less then you were. You want to mourn him, the only boy you have ever loved but all of the tears in your body are gone and you can't think of a way to get them back.

[thewitchofnovember]

You’re laying in bed with him

and I still sleep alone

but it doesn’t really matter

You’re still the best of us

and those days are long gone

but I think of you sometimes

You’re far from your native land

and those days spent under the snow

but now you belong to my past

You’re cradled in sun

and someone else’s arms

but I long to kiss the nape of your neck.

-c.m

[thewitchofnovember]

antediluvian

the light that falls over some old picture of great grandparents one of which died before i was alive and the cats that stalk the windup mechanical bird that chirps the song of spring the way summer feels against the very soles of my crooked feet bunches of blue life hyacinths that scream wasteland and the feel of literature ages old summers all caught up the presence of this right now one

[thewitchofnovember]

Genesis

She falls in love. Quietly and not unlike a secret.

When she is done she cannot speak. It is as if the very breath has been pressed from her lungs, cast out onto all four winds. She does not protest this. Instead stands with head bowed for punishment.

She thinks to become an animal, clawing, biting, scratching. She would scratch her own eyes out, bite through her own arm, bleed out onto the carpet.

Instead she only becomes a ghost. Separate and thinner than she was before, like her very presence has been snatched up with her breath. She cannot haunt anyone though she’s tried. It is a trick she cannot quite pick up, like learning the whole book of Genesis which is impossible and ends in tears, banished to the front parlor to stare at pictures of people past.

When she was young she was a boy. A small boy, a cat-quick boy. The kind of boy found in trees and hanging out of side windows, to catch birds. She loved being a boy, better than being a girl. When she was a boy she was allowed to go outdoors and play with other children, allowed to run and jump. She did not have to cook nor sew, as she does now. People do not touch boys, not even to put them to bed. Boys are allowed movement, legs kicking and arms waving. Not like a girl who is allowed only to be still and wait.

She wonders why they look at her so. As if she is broken or less, somehow. She thought it was only natural and at the time words like biology and specimens came to mind. Now when she tries to explain they come out broken, a mouthful of something less than perfect. They do not listen anyway, so it does not matter. They talk in hushed tones and bring bottles of stuff in and out of various bedrooms. When they come to hers she pretends to be asleep. She does not want any more pills, not as long as she can still see the thing, laid out silent by the door.

It cries. Every hour it cries, loud squalling ones that bring a maid hurrying in to sooth. No one soothes her, just glares at her, as if she’s brought the whole country to ruin instead of just one small family. She does not think it fair, that something so else could come in, into her, and ruin her life so spectacularly. She does not think that they will help her other than to send the maid in and occasionally give her pills. She is on her own then and it is all that thing’s fault, all that noise and never stopping, not even when she piles blankets over it. Anyway the maid comes in and pulls them off, as if she cannot hear those ghastly cries.

Once it is quiet they take it away, bundled up she supposes, though she does not bother to look. She still does not think that they will help her or that anything will get better.

It never does.