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People without money cope better than people with money on any given day especially when loss is afoot. I stole my loan from Temple university that was supposed to be for my grad program with no intention of ever paying it back or apologizing for my sudden departure. Social workers aree abused. I left the job that had poached me, took six weeks off, flew to Colorado to console my also deteriorating best friend, planned to move there but begrudgingly flew back to my old life and job. I took six weeks first.

“Commence devolvement!”

I was going to let myself fall deep, deep as I could go. I wore my magician gown and let my sneer spread in the mirror. Twirling for the mirror. For six weeks, I charmed her with my incantations and roses at the nightstand. My house was lit with alternating black and white votives and classical music, tarot decks and a budding synopsis that was plainly wrong but really I’m the fairest thing that ever happened to you. I know because I once saw the whole thing.  You could say I asked for it.

“God,” I began.

I was centered in sigil. My spine was straight, although I usually slouch. I usually admonish myself for taking up too much space on my couch; even alone, even privately, I shrink. This evening was different. I felt propped by something and sitting up, breathing softly, not nervous and with intention. The gasping I am used to transmuted into long, deep inhales; long, thrumming exhales. That night even the callous on my palm where I lay the plastic straw I can’t let go of, can’t stop twiddling as I walk around the city, felt soft.  It felt healed and my hands smelled like cherry blossom from the lotion I rubbed on my knees as I took care of myself, my needs, for once. Once a day, I drink water and rest. Once a day, I pause to smell a honeysuckle. Once in a while, I cease compulsion to drop the straw, pet a dog, move on.

I was melting; suffused with the moonstone resting on my lap, becoming waxing crescent. I was becoming spring. Dust around me tickled my shoulders to remind me: We are here to help you breathe. I immediately became breath. The room rocked like a cradle and I was swathed in her gentle nightlight. I was enveloped. Call the dust what you want, the noise what you want: dirt, fantasy, demons, guides, saints, Lilith and her coven (I light candles to all kinds), they were there that night using my forearms, using my hands, using my throat to sing. My diaphragm rose and fell with ease. God. I asked for breath. Breathe. I became breath. I became nestled in large silk strands.

“God,” I waited and then started again.

I let the fire in my chest build with each name I said until I could feel the slow burning rise to full flame. I waited until I could feel the full pounding of the floor dropping out, until I was hovering in air, until I was on the cloud. It’s the pyre I’ve been waiting for: the charred ribs, the suckled breasts, the ghosts that waft out of the ropes. I waited until I knew who to ask for; until I heard someone say it.

God,” I started again, and let it be known I was not in fear, I was not shaking, I was not anxious. “Whose answered prayer am I?”

There is no trepidation. You only enter with one affirmation. You only enter with perfect love and perfect trust or you do not enter us. I waited. I waited. And though the time crippled me, I still waited for the door to open and I then I rushed.

“the magician”

It didn’t start in New Orleans but it followed me home. Two of them: black and white. And the dreams of them were awful. One I choked and one I yelled at. You can’t say for certain who you are, or were, in a past life. You can’t say anything for certain. That’s what I told the psychiatrist. He said

“It sounds confusing.”
No one ever held me anywhere for long. I was breaking out of everything; talking myself in and out of prison. I had nothing to do with the two witches’ fight. My brother warned me as a child

“You can’t be so trusting, lion, people will hurt you.”
I was a sweet milky flower.
“Don’t be so naive.”
I am a walking torch.
“You’ve opened too many portals.”
I was doomed.
When the first witch came, I was sleeping in bed with a friend in a New Orleans hotel room. I felt her enter before I had the vision. Me, sitting up and my mouth suddenly blowing black smoke that turned into bats.

I told her, “I can’t help you, you’re already dead.”
Then she approached in her form: old and white and I grabbed her by the neck and choked her. I woke up terrified to tell my friend my dream. I slept unsoundly. I had seen my face in a mirror pouring black bats. There was no mirror on the dresser in front of me.
When the black witch came, she was a little mad but I wasn’t sure why. I was sleeping in my bed. It was around Valentine’s Day, 2018. The same friend was there in my bed, we are close, like sisters. The black witch came and cornered me in my own bathroom. I realize now, we were confused. I was yelling at her. She was yelling at me. Sometimes I just saw names. Lists of names. Google found a family dead in the midwest with those names. A black family. I also realize now I didn’t look in the mirror.
“I can’t help you, you’re already dead.”
They always show me The High Priestess and the other dream I wore a bat on my wrist.
“Be careful with that,” a strange woman said to me. “I serve Lucifer.”

In the dream, we were underground. I was attending “witch school.” A woman who shared my same birthday told me we talk with our fingers like this and she held them up and twisted them, the way I had done my whole life with the straw. You were there, and this was when I was dead set on meeting your eye. You were talking to two black women and frowning and I was talking to two white women.
I should have never been in the middle of the war. I’m neutral. I’m not from here but they both found me and both begged to tell their stories. One night, I snapped
“And you think it’s ok to disguise yourselves as ONE child that follows me everywhere and whisper your fucking story while I am trying to keep it together?!”
We had covered the mirrors. I don’t know what the fuck has happened to me. That’s where I should have started.
I calmly tell my therapist, “I am ready for hypnosis.”

“the act of naming things”

What I should have told the first psychiatrist is that I had been writing the Valentine’s Day story when I choked on the cherry pit. She had been grinding up seeds to make cyanide to place in the cupcakes but she had also placed thumbtacks in the batter. One way or another, she would prove her might. She trusted her man’s gluttony. The cyanide was devilish simply to prove that women are mechanics too. Women research too. Women design traps too.  I didn’t tell him that, scared of being dismissed, labeled histrionic, fantastic, childish and I wish I had explained it was the synchronicity that was getting to me. It wasn’t just the difficulty swallowing but the fact that I had never been heard. That the song titles changed when I had the same thought. That the electronics began crashing around me, in buildings, at home. The time in Colorado when the blue eyed woman came to pull me out of my body during a nap. It wasn’t just the thought of someone and then they pop up but the way the signs start flashing the same things. It wasn’t just the phone listening, it was the way the oven timer went off. The way I awoke at 3:33 am nightly. The way everyone who entered said my place was “vibrating.” The way pictures fell off the wall. The way I awoke in the middle of the night, paralyzed hearing my father’s voice before he had his heart attack. It was the psychics and the readings and the time I woke up in the living room facing something that looked like my dead brother, glowing white and face stretched like a crocodile, and he was pointing to a painting of a tree he made long ago.

Trust no one, Cat.

Next thing I know I am desperately crawling back to bed, screaming feeling something tear at my legs. Or the little boy I hugged. Or the little girl that chases me.
No one believes anything as much as you do and no one was there to see the apparitions. I take solace in history because witnesses have existed before my long period of loneliness. My partner once, during a nap, tried to wake me. He said I was twitching, moaning, like I was being tortured. When he shook my shoulders, I awoke and screamed in his face causing him to scream.

“You were having a nightmare!”
“Well, you scared me!”

My men say I writhe, talk in my sleep. They’ve never seen me conversing in the living room but they’ve never really stuck around either. My men heard me in my sleep. My men heard me in my privacy.

I did see a therapist. Regularly. She knew about the men, confusion, lists, playlists, fantasy, creative process but I had abandoned her during my most manic stage. For three months, I was on my own. It was during that time I began to explore the benefits of necromancy without a guide and black magic. I used to light the whole apartment with candles and turn off all the lights, sit at the altar facing the front door and begin to draw it with my fingers. It was a vision I was crafting. Me and a man in the woods with a wall separating us and to get by I crafted a giant spell that I would wrap around Philadelphia.
I began to leave things in parks, buried in the dirt. My rose of jericho shell, a crystal, two crystals, a lucky penny. I walked those streets daily dropping totems, asking for favor, offering sacrifrice.
“Your house is haunted because you opened tons of portals.”
“Yes.”
I knew I had haunted my own house but it didn’t make it less terrifying. The reader eyed me.
“You have the power to close them.”
I didn’t tell my therapist everything it’s true. The night I drew the front door spell was the first time my own words entranced me. Cast a net, catch a fish. Cast a bigger net, catch the ocean.
“Bite your tongue until bleeds,” the reader told me. “You are used to treachery but these are modern times. We are no longer in treacherous times.”
This city owes me.

“datura moon”

She did not brandish anything. I knew her cronies were here and I began to feel the net lift slightly, the branch moan. A white and gray beast approached and stood on hind legs scratching my back as I moved from her. This time I felt it. Despite all my layers, I felt her claws dig slightly as the net raised. It was five thirty, snowing lightly, black as hell and I was hanging from a tree. Cackling. Her friends laughed somewhere I couldn’t see; not hidden, but obscured from me.
“You remember?”
I was eight feet in the air moving to nine feet. Not out of reach but higher, and needed to get to the top of the tree. Even still, I was freezing. This is usual.
“Yes.”
Compliant, obedient, supplicant, I understood stockholm syndrome now. Become the sycophant, the nodding doll, dance for your mistress now.
“It will go faster if you just say my name.”
And the one thing I didn’t know was her name.

i smiled the whole way home to show the kids there are safe spaces left in the world after all.

I stopped on the corner and opened my phone and began writing things down. It took me forever to get anywhere.  Decidedly, I was going to take a more accurate inventory.
1. adenoma, benign
2. hyperparathyroidism
3. calcium levels are fine so it’s can’t be adenoma–don’t need surgery, that’s what she said. “Your calcium levels are fine but I can refer you to an endocrinologist if you’re still worried.” This isn’t psychosomatic.
4. my diet is poor but I have been actively infusing calcium for months and sneaking dairy.
5. possibly, the enlargement has shrunk as my diet has gotten better.
6. tell doctor about years of malnourishment and drinking tea. tea affects absorption.
I get plenty of sunlight, even in winter, I use a sunlamp and take vitamin d supplement.
7. mood swings related to diet.
8. anorexia related to choking.
9. blood sugar drops effects mood.
10. hyperparathyroidism causes depression.
My partner once told me I should run for mayor. It takes me forever to get anywhere, I am always going back in time and forward and listening to the wind thirty blocks north.
“You’re the most ethical person I have ever met and not easily corrupted. You wouldn’t be persuaded and you love truth telling. I think you’re allergic to lies.”
“I would never be mayor.”
“Why?”
“The pressure.
I can whine, complain and bitch but also fix a bunch of things. My criticism is the blimp that carries me.
` 11. fatigue. have been sleeping more which helps. not working helps. rest helps. I have been eating better.
“You’re also a big shiny light,” he said.
“I don’t want to be mayor. I don’t want to be noticed. I just want things fixed.”
My moods move houses. They jump from room to room. Something that feels uncontrollable might possibly be uncontrollable.
12. poltergeist
I wanted a reason, not an excuse. That’s when I first called her.
13. Lilith
“I just think you have exceptional talent you may be wasting drinking.”
And then you go backwards.
12. History of drinking. What do several unchecked concussions do to a body? Vitamin depletion? Dehydration? Liver and kidney detox.
11. What does incessant walking due to the knees, the back, while carrying groceries to make it feel “productive?”?
10. What does caffeine do? Active urination from caffeine. Dry body leads to excessive water intake. Lots of urination
What does love feel like?
“I used to never sleep.”
“Oh yeah,” he rolled over. “And now?”
Looking up at the ceiling, I thought carefully.
“Then one day I learned I could walk through dreams.”

“Datura moon”

“I need a witness.”
“Well go ahead, cat, choose your victim.”

“two of swords” or “the act of maiming things”

“Well, I moved a lot also. And I was involved with a community I no longer relate to. Several communities in fact.”
She ignored me.
“You don’t have health insurance?”
“No. Lots of people don’t have health insurance. Or savings. Most people have 100 to 1000 extra at any given moment. That’s it.”
She nodded but I knew she wasn’t listening.
“Having a thyroid disorder is one of the most common disorders.”
“Is that what I have?”
She didn’t look at me every time she spoke. She looked at the computer and the chart.
“I am waiting to get the blood work back. We will check your thyroid levels and calcium levels first. And b12 since you’re vegan.”
I am common. I am a common plague of malnourishment, a childhood diet of sugar and an adult diet of caffeing, overproductivity and poor self esteem, loose plans based on insecurity and no savings. I have no future plans. I don’t think about retirement or my parent’s retirement. I don’t wonder what would happen if I suddenly became paralyzed or sick. I am of average weight and height and financial status. My friends say I am pretty but my mirrors are currently covered with sheets so I can’t fact check and even when I can, a crone stares back and she is aging. I am of average intelligence in many ways except a friend told me I “synthesize quickly” and am above average but I get lost daily. I can do calculations in my head and predict and follow trends, but I can’t control my impulses enough to fit in. I am saved by the things that scare you: faith, the divine art of timing, gambling, cunning, luck and magic. I am also white and educated. My nails are long and acrylic and I feel guilty but I state patiently
“I am having trouble swallowing and sometimes I choke and spit my food out. My jaw gets tired of chewing and I feel like I can’t swallow. Sometimes I can’t swallow well on command either and I have sinus problems, seasonal allergies and post nasal drip. Once my lymph nodes got so swollen from post nasal drip, I couldn’t swallow.”
“Like a tightness?” he asked.
“Yes, I can’t tell if something is there.”
They stuck a tube up my nostrils and down my throat.
“You are fine. I don’t see anything. Your tonsils are fine and I see no blockages. Your ultrasound showed you have a bump beneath your thyroid that is probably benign. Your thyroid is fine. We need a blood test for calcium levels. In the meantime, I am prescribing you something for reflux to help with mucus.In six to eight weeks, if you don’t notice an improvement in swallowing, we will investigate further.”
“Ok.”
But she said
“Your parathyroid is slightly enlarged. It’s amazing you can feel that. You are sensitive.
“The other doctor said it was a bump, not an enlarged parathyroid.”
“Yes, our parathyroid is enlarged but your calcium levels are fine. I can refer you to an endocrinologist but your blood work is fine.”
“Ok, but it’s the language I am confused about.”
“We can discuss that again when I see you on November 1. This is just a five minute script consult to make you you get the prescription.”
“I know but I am anxious and he said…”
“Did he look at your throat?”
“I told you he put a tube down my nostril and it went to my throat and saw nothing but he said it was a bump below my thyroid.”
“YOUR PARATHYROID IS ENLARGED.”
She raised her voice like my hearing is the issue. Hyperparathyroidism causes forgetfulness and confusion. She didn’t tell me that. I researched it.
“I know, but the language he used was different and I am not a medical student so I am confused and thyroid disorders cause mood issues…”
“This is not about your thyroid, it’s your parathyroid. It’s responsible for calcium.”
The other doctor had calmly stated, “problems with your parathyroid can cause major issues in your body including trouble swallowing.”
He said it causes problems in the body, parathyroid, bump.
“You keep interrupting me. I have an anxiety disorder.”
“Do you see a therapist?”
I ignored her constant interruption.
“Yes, and I am telling you that navigating a health care system without having health insurance while suffering from dysphagia and not knowing what is wrong is triggering. I am confused and…”
“Am I not explaining it to you? Did I not go over everything?”
“You’re cold.”
Jump off the bridge, Cat.
She snorted, “I am sorry I am not sweet.”
“It’s not that you’re not sweet, it’s that you’re not listening and I am triggered.”
She faced me again, had raised her voice every time, and said
“I am taking up other people’s time to explain this to you. Your blood work is fine. Your parathyroid is enlarged and it’s great you can feel that but we will go over your blood work on November 1. If we need to, we will refer you to an endocrinologist. And I didn’t look at the ultrasound, only read the report and the report said enlarged parathyroid.”
He said, “Parathyroid enlargement can cause major issues in the body including swallowing issues.”
They are saying two different things, Cat.
I began to cry on accident, overwhelmed by the discrepancy and not remembering accurately enough or understanding enough to explain my fears. We had been talking max ten to fifteen minutes. I had watched the door the entire time and other people were in here the same amount, sometimes longer. Most of them could not speak English well. This should be easy for her.
“Are you seeing a psychiatrist?”
“No.”
“I think you should.”
I am common, average of average income, navigating the health system without health insurance or solid knowledge of the body. I hold trauma in my body and could hear a pindrop upstairs from the basement or a change of movement of blood in my body or a breeze near your door. Any change in my body is felt  and then felt again in my brain. I can feel a drop in temperature or a minute tick by or an unkind word spoken about me from a distance and I can feel my parathyroid growing, my bones snapping, my joints inflamed, unspecified pain and forgetfulness and I don’t cry in front of people.
“I am not seeing a psychiatrist and will speak with you further on November 1 but you should learn to hold space for reactions like this when I have explained that I have no health insurance and am navigating a health care system that is new to me while admitting I have anxiety.”
I walked home recounting every village I had burned. I was proud of myself for not making a scene. What I should have said to the callous, rude bitch is parathyroidism can cause major disruption in the body including joint pain, bone breakage and trouble swallowing and if I choke to death, my reason for coming to this clinic, between now and November 1, I hope you remember me every night right before you go to sleep. Somewhere near, someone opened their phone to watch me and a cyclist hit a car door.

“I remember what he said,” I said out loud watching the hand turn to a person across the street, “He said adenoma, probably non cancerous. She didn’t fucking care.”

“the act of naming things”

With my eyes closed, I could breathe. My limbs, fingers, lips, face; the entire body was numb. I had looked up once when the snow started to be greeted by black and white static. The branches were obscured by my body’s placement in the net and my neck was so tense I could barely move it. I closed my eyes to breathe. Breathe. I am breath. I was breathing, sleepy, going to sleep. It must have been five fifteen by now when they all started howling.
“How are you doing?”
“Oh, I’m hanging in there.”
I laughed. I just started laughing. As they howled, I laughed maniacally. This is everything I had ever seen, heard, visualized. Everything I thought, exploding and in the middle of being stalked, flanked. I laughed and they howled louder.
How are you doing? she whispered. Are you ready to come down?
“No!” I screamed to the air. “I’ll play your fucking game.”
She was right behind me.
“You remember the agreement?”
“I remember everything. And I will play your stupid fucking game.”
“You have once chance, sweet one.”
“That’s all I ever need.”
“Not really a choice is it?”
And from my count there were eight wolves now. Four alphas, three betas, and one intermediary. I hung in the middle like that reviewing the rules.
1. Do not ask to see your death.
“Are you ready, sweet one?’
2. Trust the witch.
She blew hot air on my back to remind me.
3. Write it.
“Yes, I’m ready.”
“Something you want to say?”
“You fucking bitch.”
“Temper, temper, Ms. Salt, but you work better under pressure after all.”
She circled around me so I could see her green eyes again: slitted and vicious, lined in black pen.
“Watch the way a tongue freezes and fingers fall off. ”
I had done this already, burned most of it or erased it. Hid notebooks. Lost dreams.
“When the wind blows, you’ll feel them like an electrical storm.”
It happens twice, something said.
“Like a fire.”
Her tongue was red and wet.
“Guess who has the rest?”
I will fucking kill you.
“Girl, you better run.”