At the doorway of my 57th equinox, I feel the threads pulling taut between what has been lived, last year’s stories seeps into my marrow, and the shape I carry is now molded by the friction of the times.

The hinge of the year creaks in my ribs. In my tired muscles and thinly stretched sinew lie embers of disenfranchisement, betrayal, disappointment. Cracked myths of collective belonging, once shimmering with promises of safety, kindness, abundance, now seeped in poison, breeding fear, scarcity, and division.

Beneath the ash, I feel the murmur of my heart as it palpitates the mycelial insistence that life persists, that tenderness survives the cruelty of empire.

But for now, I must enter the threshold where the tilt carries me into fungal darkness, where husks collapse and my grief feeds worms, where maggots and fungi inscribe their scripture, and the Earth Mother opens her wet mouth to receive.

I am here to l honour autumn as I weep to in its gears. I embrace it with resinous gratitude, with bramble thick rage, and with grief damp as fallen leaves.

As the door shuts on the hollow spoils of empire’s proclaimed victories, my heart has a deeper knowing that welcomes the opening toward the feast of decay. Worms feed ravenously, compost the manipulation, lies and the gnawing invasive clutch of a fist pressed to our pulse, dictating its very rhythm, our spoken word, and guaranteed liberties.

I weave myself amoung the fungi as it works patiently, efficaciously splitting stone. Roots sharpen themselves against fractured oaths. Forbearance settles into the marrow, tenacity threads the sinew that refuses to tear, and I sing to my pulse that keeps a gentle rhythm even in the dark.

And as the world waits to break open anew, I will continue to love ferociously in a season shadowed by fear, yet seeded with wild devotion cracking open with liberation.

My prayer is to greet you at this portal closing and a new one yet to dawn with even fonder affection and renewed faith that we will prevail.