Thirty-Six
the morning of my birthday, i woke with a heavy heart. i haven't been able to stop thinking about someone who hurt me very deeply last spring. i miss them, more than, as a friend suggested, just for the figure they represented in my life. i can say that now. i miss them. i think about reaching out to try and mend things, but i know it has no use. what's there to mend anyway with someone who couldn't see me? sometimes two people are too... not toxic, but too charged to be close. we just repel each other like the ends of magnets. we're both carrying too much pain and trauma as sisters of the diaspora. or, our brands of pain are just not compatible. maybe im giving them too much credit.
thinking about that particular relationship sharpened the context of several others that have also been weighing on my heart. it gave me new strength and i mourned them as well. it's okay to let go.
i pulled a card from my deck and was shook to see the word "boundaries." my mother texted to wish me a happy birthday. she reminded me that the full moon was two days ago. it was 대부름, the great full moon, the first full moon of the new lunar year. it's a time to set intentions. to set boundaries. i wrote my wishes on a piece of paper and burned them. i prayed to my grandmothers.
the moon holds us all. my mother tells me she's become americanized, but she still knows the cycles of the moon and the seasons. she still knows that with this full moon we all gain a year in age. collectively, together. me and my mother, and even that repellant magnet.