SATURN’S RETURN

5.24.21
The same day I pulled the velcro from my lips my phone hung up on itself.

That night we shuffled likes for a garden full of archetypes showing off their canines.
No one snarled. Not here, not anymore.
These madcaps turned enough cycles to know their plugins fit no outlet. They’ve seasoned in their brine, ripened the hardness from the growl.

Save that bite for tomorrow, fates know we’ll need it.

There’s a Cheshire cat cackling half facts from the hammock. She says the flocks inside our mind orbit the gravity of our pulse, that’s why their hours seem longer than ours.
She tells me if we wait long enough, one of them will be Mercury, one will be Venus, one will be Earth, one will be Mars.

Even then, I could tell her astronomy was clumsy and domestic, a way of keeping track of social graces and goldfish etiquette. A way to make sure an elastic band could hug the wrist.

We’re flexible, so I believed her when she said “There are breadwinners, and there are birdfeeders. Manu, we are birdfeeders.”

Typical Gemini.

We starve distractions to feed nourishment, and yes, we know this doesn’t always mean heartache skips meals. Even here we know this type of “fly” is the gift of taking things lightly.

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I’ve spent months collecting memories. I know I’ll never get those words back. I slept on myself for a while.

There’s symbolism there.

Can you blame me? There are burn scars on my neck, from when train-wrecks crashed their own party.

I learned (eventually) that it’s less about building walls, but knowing when to close the window. Knowing there’s too much whiteness in their eye. It’s lifeless and stodgy. It atrophies my history into their version of “hard,” amputates my past, discredits my present.
But I won’t allow it to choke-hold my future.

I can let those words rest in their grave. I find life in my family’s shades of caramel and brown, pasts rich with empathy, hearts so light with the weight of rejected history they know how to find celebration.