Autumntide: Coming to the Perilous Castle

I thought it was finally time to write about this new season, the season of autumn which hurts. It feels like life is slipping away, and I’m trying to hold onto it, hold onto the warmth of summer, to the vacationing and relaxation that came late to me, to the walking without jackets. I am trying to put at bay the snow and the short days. We have passed the midpoint, from now on days will get shorter and shorter and this will take us to Yule. I didn’t want to celebrate this day. It gave me no joy. I thought in a way it was better to move past it as quickly as possible. What’s more, I had no idea of how to observe this turning of the year.

But the Craft gives all the time. You just have to wait, and so I was first guided to Laurelei’s AFW posts,  guided to go back to some basics, to read about the Red Castle and Silver Queen who dwells in the southwest on an island off of the great water, I came into contact with the Castle Perilous where the Red Meal is offered. My own Perilous Castle is a nearby little island in the river. There the water and the sand taught me as did the great trees, that the Perilous Castle is a temple, and the sacrifice is, in the end, me. There, on the island, I began to be able to offer myself, to let go of holding on, to find beauty in the sacrifice, to begin to change, to question what I had not.

This can’t be all about you

Just because of what we shared in some dark room, that your stupid ass can hardly remember

You were half smoked out, half high in shades, cared for little but yourself and that’s why you are where you are now

And it’s not that I was a saint giving up my life, but it was the first time, you and your friend, that I had given myself to two men, and I was perfectly in command and you were perfectly nude,

I rode you, then I rode him,

From one to another, and I would have done it better if I had done it older and you said

will you eat my ass out

and he did

and you asked me if I could take the both of you at once

and I said it’s time to leave the sun is rising

I wonder if it’s changed you, if prison’s made a man of you or if transformation is the kind of magic that takes even more than that.

I regret to tell myself I think it does, these words take time and money’s spent for every single word that’s sent

I fear, without resentment, you might still be too dumb to understand that.

Summer turns to fall I want to hold on and I sit mourning like a lady with a miscarriage, shut my legs to this as the blood and flesh fall out and I cramp on yesterday

Summer turns to fall and summer turns to fall

And all my green leaves blood red

I cannot hold it at all, no I can’t hold it all

When you remind me of the red altar, I get on this black robe and take the walk to the red castle

cross the bridge and cross the moat and on the island make read to make the sacrifice, to ready all I have been holding onto. To let others see what all this time what I only gave to you, bear the chalice, bear the bread, bare your throat and make it red, as the leaves as the blood, as the sunset we’re sure of, the hap’ning river and by the key, bind the old Persephone

He said to me

Remember when I was on my knees in the dark, and you fucked my mouth and I thought inst that good isn’t that good, and you slid in and out of me and said, oh my god, that’s so good, feel that wood, and because of that burial, all this time I’ve een loyal to something that should have only been a moment.

He said to me

“Remember the green lights and the red and the yellow in that merry room in December when everything was hot as breath before I lost my mind and ran away, when you and I were we, do you remember all those nights I moaned while you fucked me under the Christmas tree?”

And I said I remembered when he lost his mind and vanished, and it has been some time since I have thought of fucking him in the lights of the Christmas tree

Men are not forgiving because they do not believe they’ve been forgiven

How can you believe you’ve gotten something you so loudly say you do not need?

I strip off pants and shirt and underwear, stand fat and naked in the mirror, think of myself long ago and the stupid mistakes I made

I didn’t have much wisdom then and can’t be sure I have it now

I go to the island in the river

I go to the island in the river

You change when you sit by the river

Under the pillars I prepare the offering

Stand fat and naked mirrored in the water

With a witch’s necklace and a dangling chain