Anniversaries get me every time

​Anniversaries get me every time. There's something in my musk animal centre; wolf-wise parts of me track the length of days, even when the human skin I wear is numbed to that knowledge by soft beds and hard deadlines. The turning of the earth, the pull of the moon, the harbinger winds still register, way down deep where my fur is soft and my claws are sharp. I pant and count and wait with the endless patience of a hunter. Hunting myself, if only I knew it.

Today I feel insane, all out of whack, my skin too thin, eyes too hot, every noise a prickle, every puff of air a howl. Like all the dials are turned up too high. I can't find the switches and the feeling is almost panic, what if I get stuck like this when the wind changes. Loki's laughing from the dark corners of forest as I dance the helpless dance of the red soul shoes, unable to stop until my heart is in ribbons. Insane.

I'm prepping for a Vision Quest in a week, have been tilling and kneading at the secret soil of myself, digging my fingers into rich loam, snagging my nails on sharp rocks and heavy roots. Blood blesses the dirt of me, this is the preparation, unearthing. This is good magic, the best. It hurts as splinters do when you press on them, before they pop out in a rush of softened wood and ooze. Before the wound runs clean.

Fasting, questioning, what is who am where and how and when and oh and deeper and I'm following a tune I can't quite catch but it's lodged in the back of my eyes like a rusty hook, a maddening whistle, I track and trace but it's elusive, leading me down and in and it's muddy in here, there's barbed wire in tangles. All the creatures I avoid coil and gaze, we're waiting, we always have been. Quest brings them up, its siren ceremony is the scent of raw meat, the acrid tang of spilled blood, maddening, luring them to where I can finally see them if I want to. Make friends. Sing. Slay. Soften.

Should I want to.

I do. I don't.

Fisherwoman that I still am, gnarled and salt scarred, casting filigree nets into ceaseless tides, yes, still casting... but I've been less diligent, less vigilant of late. Tired, I suppose. There's only so much awareness you can blaze before it burns your own eyes to squinting wrecks. And grieving takes so very much awareness.
I know I've earned the rest, like a week bingewatching Netfflix after teaching months of back to back programmes. Lights switched off, nobody's home, crap films and chocolate and late night fantasies that are nobody's business but mine.

I've grieved for six and a half years now. Her birthday is close. Solstice, the shortest day. Anniversaries stir the wolf hairs at the back of my neck. We were in the hospital now, back then, the antiseptic stink of that groundhog hell, before we knew how bad it was. When there was still hope. When there was a future with her joyous laugh pealing though it. When I was still a mother.

Grief, my old friend, today you have me python-style, wrapped around my neck, my ribs, and you squeeze and squeeze. I know I will never be done with you but plaintive, I sometimes wish it. That's the weary, right there.

I miss her.

Her half sister runs through this gorgeous field, her face splashed with sunshine and promises. The shape of her head is Blaise's, even if her hair is the wrong colour, thank goodness. Seeing her day in day out, her face open, her heart blessedly unmarred, secure and vital and beautiful, chattering, learning all the words, sharing all her food, always... is bringing up the ghosts.

Ghost. My own beautiful ghost.

The little one gives me a cuddle today when I cry.

'Sad?' she says, concerned, her two year old voice making the word like she's proud she knows it.

'Sad' I say. She pulls a mock-sad face. She doesn't look like Blaise but she does, and the wolf mama in me howls a little, every day, to see her. There's that rusty fish hook, lodged in my heart now, and I can never pull it out, it's the shape of my love, and my pain, and my dedication, and my devotion. And my grief, let's call it what it is. My old friend.

Questing in a week, and already it's doing what Quest is supposed to do, it's bringing up the bones. I'm a little afraid of how intense it will be, four days and nights in the wilderness alone with her ghost for company. I called her in, in my first Quest, over a decade ago. She told me her true name and I sang it into the abyss and she sang back and then she came, for real, in the flesh, her spark landing in my body less than four weeks later. She found me in that first Quest and now she’s dancing me into this one, tugging at my hand, come ON, I want to TALK to you.

I'm looking forward to it.

This pain, this rawness, this reminds me how much I love her. How much she is woven into every cell in me, the fabric of my being, the cloth of my love is cut with scissors her starfish hands can no longer wield, long gone to ash. My tears belong to her.

I know I will never be done grieving, but today I wish I was.

No.
I don't.

This is the shape of my love for her. I never want to forget it. I'm tracing its frayed edges and forgotten hollows with fingers callused from guitar strings and hands striped with fire scars.

Even through my scars I can still feel her.
​
She never left.