Tides
If anyone was born to lycanthropy, I am she.
I was born under a full moon.
When they cut me from my mother, I came out covered in fine hairs. Because of the manner of my birth, I emerged covered in blood, and they tell me I smiled. I do not remember.
So I often think I was born to this: mania. Touched by the moon-goddess in her fright mask, forever marked.
I have my daimōnes, my di manes, gods of the mind. They are part of my mania, my lunar madness. They speak to me, for me, a blessing distilled by moon-blind science to no more than a symptom of my "illness." When they are silent, I know that my moon is empty, bled out hollow and black, and the only voice I hear is my own dead echo.
Like the moon, I circle, I wax and wane, the spindle of my creativity swelling and narrowing again. Sometimes I bleed for it, sometimes I bleed for no reason, but I always bleed. That's the moon, too. That's the tide of my blood.
I cannot escape its ebb, its flow, any more than I can escape this divine madness. I could not forsake either, not without becoming less than I am.
I cannot leave the beast within me behind, the one whose lust rises and falls according to some unseen inner moon, a black lunar sun like an afterimage in the heart. I know that, now.
I was born under a full moon.
A full moon watches me tonight.
I have come full circle.
I was born under a full moon.
When they cut me from my mother, I came out covered in fine hairs. Because of the manner of my birth, I emerged covered in blood, and they tell me I smiled. I do not remember.
So I often think I was born to this: mania. Touched by the moon-goddess in her fright mask, forever marked.
I have my daimōnes, my di manes, gods of the mind. They are part of my mania, my lunar madness. They speak to me, for me, a blessing distilled by moon-blind science to no more than a symptom of my "illness." When they are silent, I know that my moon is empty, bled out hollow and black, and the only voice I hear is my own dead echo.
Like the moon, I circle, I wax and wane, the spindle of my creativity swelling and narrowing again. Sometimes I bleed for it, sometimes I bleed for no reason, but I always bleed. That's the moon, too. That's the tide of my blood.
I cannot escape its ebb, its flow, any more than I can escape this divine madness. I could not forsake either, not without becoming less than I am.
I cannot leave the beast within me behind, the one whose lust rises and falls according to some unseen inner moon, a black lunar sun like an afterimage in the heart. I know that, now.
I was born under a full moon.
A full moon watches me tonight.
I have come full circle.