tonight i did magic. 

i came back from a long walk in the setting sun thinking of what to leave behind, of death. i tore a third of a page from the notebook i use to jot things down and tore it into thirds. in the dark with a sharpie i wrote on them my regret, my bitterness, my fear of death. i grabbed a cup from the kitchen and the lighter from my altar, that sits in the south and speaks for fire, and i went outside to the crossroads in front of my house. one by one i burned the pieces of paper. i dug a hole in the hard dry clay in the summer twilight heat with my fingers and a piece of bark and buried the ashes. when i had covered them with dirt i spit on the pile, a long rope of drool that sank into the earth. 

my regret went up easily; my bitterness went out and had to be lit again and almost burned my fingers; my fear of death went smooth and lingered in ember. 

though i am sweaty i feel clean; though i was hot i felt a cool breeze. though i am tired i feel new life. 

tonight i am doing magic. 

I wanted to go out. I came at it casually all day, trying not to pressure myself; an event at a bar I knew about. I wanted to go out. I came to a stopping point in my painting; I saw numbers and portents that told me to move forward. I took a shower. I put on a dress, that I had made myself, of cloth I chose and bought myself, with stitches I had laid myself. I painted my eyes and blew my hair dry and shook out its loose curls and filled them with the smell of the ocean. I put rings on my fingers and ears and a necklace around my neck; a silver square with Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, sitting in fire or clouds. I put money in my purse, a stack of one dollar bills, to give out to the girls. I sat down and kissed the cat, and held and scratched his face, and I looked at my phone and scrolled, and I didn't go. The event passed, and I looked at my phone. 

My heart broke. I failed myself, once again. A want of joy defeated again by laziness, and fear of being seen. Fear of being alone, that made me alone. 

I saw myself in the mirror and I said terrible things. I said that I had failed. I looked twenty years older. 

I told myself to feel the sadness, the loneliness, the regret. I told myself to sit with them, in them, like a car. 

I laid down in bed and did not take off my dress, or my makeup, or the rings on my fingers or the silver goddess on my breast, and I told myself to feel the glamour of it; the story of it all. I felt an inevitability settle into me; of change. A beautiful woman laid on her bed, cat in arms and fully dressed in all her jewels and furs, too afraid to to out, too sad. I saw her wake in the dawn, mascara smeared, born anew.

I am writing this down, so you can see: her vulnerability. 

I heard fireworks at the end of the block.

In the morning I woke up and peeled myself out of my failures one by one. I untied my long dress and put it back on its rack. I took off my chains, and ripped out a chunk of my hair that had tangled in them, which i rolled up in my fingers into a ball and put into a gilt box on my altar, with other relics of past failures. i took off my rings and my earrings and wiped the smeared mascara from my eyes and i felt dead inside. i drank cold water and felt regret, and said to myself i must redeem my lies; all the times i said i would do something and then shied.