you & me

Why Did You Stop Believing In Her Magic?

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I still believe in magic.

I still believe that I live in a magical place, despite its blood-tinged wars and dark shadowed schemes.

A world created from the pitch.

Because we are made of magic and we are the starlight shooting forth from that dark.

I still pray to goddesses, I read tarot cards, I smudge the sage to sift through the soot, I cleanse my crystals in salt water by the light of the moon, and I light candles for more than just meditative purposes.

I believe in the prophetic nature of dreams, I base my decisions not just on fact but my instincts, my gut feelings, this innate sense of knowing without actually having any experienced knowledge.

A woman’s intuition.

Intuition.

That exists no matter how hard you might try to suppress it. It is the knowledge your soul carried with it into this body. You drown out the sound of your soul with ridged rules and facts and too many explanations.

When you were a child, you didn’t have any explanations, and things just were as you imagined them to be. The lightning bugs were fairies; the wishes you could make on a shooting star would come true as long as you didn’t utter it aloud, same with birthday candles and dandelion puffs.

Butterflies lived for twenty four hours and you cried at their funerals because you understood then that life was fleeting. You knew the rain was coming from the smell of the grass on your way to school in the morning. You knew it would be a beautiful summer day if the moon was water colored red.

You believed in fables and folklore, myths and legends.

And then you stopped.

You explained away all your bright, glittering joy. You forgot the pleasure found in daydreams. Assured yourself bad things were just the effect of a cause and not simply because you threw out some karma and it came back to you threefold.

You told yourself the Universe wasn’t listening anymore, but in fact you just forgot…

… how to speak the language of trees and gurgling streams and forgot…

… how to decode the flight patterns, the hieroglyphics of thundering wings. You paid no mind to an unkindness of ravens and a murder of crows, turned deaf ears towards the hollow hooting echoing and the mourning cry of doves.

The lightning struck twice and the bark caught fire and you thought nothing of it. Forgot the signs and omens of good fortune and ill, just gave in to your fate and forgot you had free will.

You got too caught up in making a living that you forgot the magic in this life.

…turned blind eyes to the glowing aura that surrounds the moon at twilight.

Wild-eyed imagination resided rampant in those eyes,

Until you abandoned that vision,

The magic you denied.

 

I’ll be seeking all the mystery and all that remains unseen

Because I did not give up on magic

Why then, did you give up on me?

 

*****

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Alise Versella

Alise Versella

Alise Versella is a twice Pushcart-nominated contributing writer for Rebelle Society whose work has also been published in Apricity Magazine, Crack the Spine, DASH Literary Journal, El Portal, Elephant Journal, Enclave, Entropy, Evening Street Review, Grub Street, Midwest Quarterly, The Opiate, Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, Press Pause Press, The Rail, Soundings East, Ultraviolet Tribe, What Rough Beast, Steam Ticket, Visitant, and Wrath-Bearing Tree, among others. She has recently published a poetry collection When Wolves Become Birds (Golden Dragonfly Press) and Maenad's of the 21st Century (forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press) and was nominated for Sundress Pub’s 2021 Best of the Net award.
Alise Versella
Alise Versella