(An invocation for the Witch who remembers herself)
The call was in my blood.
In my bones.
In my Soul.
Magick was a language
I knew before I could speak.
Before the world taught me
which words were dangerous.
Before I learned
that a Woman with a voice
could be called a problem
by everyone
who benefited from her silence.
Then Hekate called.
And I answered.
Not with a whisper.
Not with a pretty little prayer
folded neatly between my palms.
I answered in fire.
My Craft was fire.
My writing was fire.
My voice,
a blade dragged
against the throat
of everything I had been taught
to swallow.
I said the things
other people wouldn’t.
The things they knew
but dared not name.
The things that made polite company
shift in their chairs
and call me too much.
Too loud.
Too strange.
Too sharp around the edges.
Too unwilling to kneel
at the Altar of other people’s comfort.
I mistook their fear
for a warning.
And slowly,
so slowly
I almost didn’t notice,
I began to make a smaller Woman
out of myself.
I softened the language.
Rounded the teeth.
Put a leash on the lightning.
I learned the choreography
of being palatable.
How to enter a room
without disturbing its delicate lies.
How to swallow the sentence
that might make someone
think less of me.
How to fold my wildness
into something tidy enough
to be loved.
And for what?
Approval?
A place at a table
where I had to amputate
pieces of myself
to fit?
I stopped speaking so loudly.
And the world rushed in
to fill the silence.
It filled it with its rules.
Its expectations.
Its convenient little stories
about who a Woman should be
if she wants to be kept.
I drowned.
For years.
Not in water,
but in the slow suffocation
of becoming acceptable
to people who had never
been asked to become smaller
for me.
I drowned in the opinions
of people who did not know my Soul.
In the hunger to be liked.
In the exhaustion
of trying to make myself
understandable
to those determined
to misunderstand me.
I begged the mirror
to show me someone
the world could love.
Until one day
I looked into my own eyes
and could no longer recognize
the Woman doing the begging.
And something primal
inside me
bared its teeth, and growled:
Enough.
Not the polite enough.
Not the woman-at-the-end-of-her-rope
enough.
The primordial enough.
The serpent uncoiling.
The gate swinging open.
The black dog lifting its head
at the Crossroads.
Hekate had not abandoned me.
I had simply become
so busy asking the world
for permission
that I could no longer hear
the Goddess calling me home.
So here is what I know now:
Not everyone must like me.
Not everyone must understand me.
Not everyone gets a vote
on the Woman I am becoming.
There are Elders
whose wisdom I honor.
There are voices
I hold close because
they have earned their place
beside my fire.
But the crowd?
The chorus of strangers?
The endless tribunal
of other people’s expectations?
Let them talk.
I have a Soul to answer to.
And every night
when I stand before the mirror,
I will ask myself:
Did I betray my own knowing
to make someone else comfortable?
Did I abandon my voice
to avoid being misunderstood?
Did I live this day
as the Woman I am
or as the Woman
I thought would be easier to love?
If I can meet my own gaze
without turning away,
then let the world
keep its verdict.
I am not returning
to the Woman I was.
I have no desire
to crawl backward
into an old skin
just because it once fit.
I am the Alchemy
of every Woman I have been.
The girl who knew Magick
before she knew the names for it.
The Witch who spoke in lightning.
The Woman who drowned
trying to be loved.
The survivor
who found the bottom
and pushed herself
back toward the light.
I carry them all.
I am not choosing
between my fire
and my wisdom.
Between my fury
and my tenderness.
Between the Woman
who burned the world open
and the Woman
who learned what to do
with the ashes.
I am the tempering.
The marriage of flame and iron.
The blade that knows
when to cut
and when to become
a key.
I am becoming
something neither
my former self
nor my fear
could have imagined.
And I am doing it
without asking
to be forgiven
for the space I occupy.
I am returning
to my roots.
To the too-muchness
that was never a flaw
but a force
the world had no language for.
The too-much Woman.
The Witch with ink beneath her nails
and a storm behind her teeth.
The Woman who wears her darkness
like a crown
and her tenderness
like a hidden blade.
The Woman who can love you
without making herself smaller.
The Woman who can tell the truth
without wrapping it
in sweetness for your consumption.
The Woman who has stopped
mistaking self-abandonment
for goodness.
I will be too loud.
I will be too original.
I will be too in your face.
I will be too strange
for your little boxes.
Too difficult
for your convenient narratives.
Too alive
for the grave you dug.
And if my voice makes the windows shake,
perhaps it is because
the house was built
to keep Women quiet.
If my words leave a mark,
perhaps it is because
the truth was never meant
to pass through the world
without touching anything.
If my fire makes you uncomfortable,
you are welcome
to step away from the flames.
But do not ask me
to put them out.
I was not born
to be a candle
in someone else’s window.
I am the Witchfire
at the Crossroads.
I am the key
turning in the lock.
I am the name
I buried beneath the need
to be chosen.
I am the voice
I traded for approval
and have come to reclaim.
And I am done
calling my power
a problem.
The world does not need
another Woman
who has mastered
the art of disappearing.
It needs the Woman
who enters the room
whole.
The Woman who speaks
before permission arrives.
The Woman who makes art
that cannot be mistaken
for anyone else’s.
The Woman who refuses
to confuse being liked
with being alive.
It needs the Witch.
The unruly daughter.
The difficult Woman.
The holy fucking nuisance.
The one who remembers.
The one who returns.
The one who stands
at the threshold
with a torch in her hand
and no intention
of handing it over.
Because the world
has had enough
of our silence.
Now it gets our voices.
Our visions.
Our rage.
Our unrepentant,
unrepeatable,
unmanageable selves.
Let them call us too much.
Let them choke
on the words.
We have spent centuries
being told to take up less space.
Let us become
impossible to contain.
The call was in my blood.
In my bones.
In my Soul.
And this time,
when the Goddess calls,
I will not make myself
smaller
before I answer.
I will reply with a roar.
Poem will be featured in the upcoming Anthology from Girl God Books, Hecate: Underworld Guide and Holy Hag
Pre-order here:
https://www.thegirlgod.com/hecate.php
Image Source: Crossed Crow Books/fb
