Remnant #4: Cassiopeia

"Cassiopeia, the Queen, can be seen in the northern hemisphere all year long. Cassiopeia was the wife of Cepheus and mother of Andromeda. She is represented chained to her throne in the heavens as punishment for her boast of being more beautiful than all the Nereids. As the skies rotate, she can sometimes be seen suffering as she hangs upside down."
 

Secrets under skin. Secret miracles hung around my neck. Secret sentences lodged in the base of my throat, unspoken. Lately, I have been sitting with the secrets and the silences. It has become my practice. Life keeps erupting all around me. Solar flares blaze and encircle my brain. A halo. And I don't have my words the way I used to, though I've inked them into my body. What is a writer when she isn't writing? The identity slips and so does the mask. Joan Didion said, "I don't know what I think until I write it down." Neither do I, but my words hold their reverent hush.

And so I pick up the needle and the thread again--back to the stitchcraft my mother showed me when I was a little girl. Needles singing through paper like my words can't. Needles telling women's stories--what they reveal and what they do not. My witches and saints, haunting at night.

I think what I mean to tell you is that one form is as good as another.  When one part of life doesn't work, let it sit there--stubborn and beautiful and unyielding--and pick up what does.  What I mean to tell you is that I will trade my words for your strands of patterned lace. I will kiss you back, if you kiss me first. Just don't ask me to tell you a story today. I don't know you. I love you already.  It is cold here, where I live. My heart, dissected in dim light, would glow with a million secret constellations.