Now again I have become my mother’s keeper. Once I saw her sitting out in the yard staring out blankly and when I asked her what she was doing she said she was taking care of the world. She said this very very softly. I didn’t know what she meant then. I do now. I also learned that what we summarize as blank stares are often filled with so much, they are not blank at all but are superficially tagged as such due to laziness and lack of depth in place of scrutiny and insight. My mother was not staring out blankly. She saw something. Many things. Or she saw nothing yet felt many things moving shapeless yet textured, like thistles of fur on the back of wind. She was addressing vagaries. She was taking care of the world.

There is a slow burn that has not yet reached me from my past, from my mother’s bones. My mother’s bone are arsonists. I know this. I keep a safe distance. At night the bones get up and do a dance, dancing the jig of the dead. Too much moonlight ignites the bones, sets them on fire, and I am keenly aware that I have way too much moonlight in my eyes, in my prolonged sieges of staring. I must’ve swallowed god knows how many moons when I was younger. My entire interior flooded with defaced moons. I am blessings and curses through and through. I am deathly afraid of the sorceress lurking in my depths. Like with my mother’s bones, I keep a safe distance. Se changes are happening. My mother’s bones are telling me my history. Spelling it out slowly in glyphs and codes. The sorceress within is budding. She is preparing to emerge, dripping brine and chrysalis goo, a new witch for turning seasons.