Crescent

Tonight,

a beginning clings to the edge of this crescent moon – hanging with grace like a precious jewel.

Beginnings never arrive solitary – endings pave the way for a fresh arrival. 

I take myself back, for a brief moment, through the roads that carried grief within their curvatures, through the places that hold the memory of pain. I remember how loss was nested in my bones, how everything I loved with conviction metamorphosed into a frightening dream. 

Today, I went to the places that offered shelter when my world was strange and heavy. The places that gave me permission to feel, to mourn. Perhaps, for a moment, I see it all again, so real – the stories that these places hold. My story.

I offer my love and infinite gratitude to these places that made a home for me, to the people who held my feet in their laps and begged me to rest, to those that listened. 

Yet, I no longer find myself there and I hear a calling

telling me to leave. I feel it strongly within each bone, the sole of my feet, my heart. A feeling of closure. I no longer fear letting go despite the darkness within uncertainty.

Before I close the doors to rooms of the past, I must forgive myself, that little girl, who knew no better than to surrender heart and soul to starved hands. Those scars are the ground from which strength sprouts upwards, roots that lead the way. I forgive myself for smothering the voice of intuition, for stifling the power and potential within in exchange for a mediocre love. 

And so I can no longer find my home within these places that carry the past.

This crescent moon points the way with precision – a sharp white edge, almost a smile, white as milk, a beginning.