An ending is the first week of September.

And also a beginning...

an ending is the first week of September.
a sad, earth smell
of summer dying
and hard work and cold days coming—

a sad, earth smell,
and knowing you’ve already changed,
and hard work and cold days coming,
and all day to fill with longing...

and knowing you’ve already changed,
that it’s just the beginning,
and all day to fill with longing
(and longing is always the start of something.)

it's just the beginning
of summer dying—
longing is always the start of something.
an ending is the first week of September.


["What is an ending?" final prompt from Image Word Mystery course, November 2022]

[Flagging all the pantoum poems I wrote between ‘22-’24.]

How long have you been letting things grow, undisturbed?

The late-summer cicadas have started their ear-numbing chorus for the evening. I hear them, even five floors up, churning then suddenly pausing in unison. However long they’ve been sleeping underground, years and years by now, they’ve emerged to live their best brief lives: Hollering out then splitting their skin down the middle, littering the sidewalks with who they used to be.

Meanwhile, surrounded by scattered papers, I’m up here in the thick of my first creative harvest in nearly 3 years.

I didn’t know how long this cycle would be when it started— only that as I was burying my body underground in early ‘22, I made myself the promise to just let myself grow undisturbed for a while. And I trusted I’d know when it was time to re-emerge.

Growing, undisturbed.

For one, we moved somewhere with a lower cost of living that allowed us to lean on Neon’s income for a while and have significantly more space. That changed everything.

I kept creative gig work on the side, but I took down my web store and stopped my wholesaling efforts completely. I truly didn’t want to spend those hours of the day maintaining Shopify shipping profiles 🫠.

I wanted to be in process and experiment with new materials. I wanted to write more poetry. I wanted to birth Image Word Mystery and really refine the way I run my creative business. I wanted to make new work and work in new ways until the work I was making thoroughly evolved me.

I wonder how the cicada knows when enough years have passed to climb back up the tree?

The end of my current cycle announced itself suddenly. One morning as I sat down to write I thought, “Hmm, maybe it’s time to actually compile all the poetry you’ve been scribbling in your notebooks and see what’s going on here??”

⭐️ Typing two-to-a-page, I had amassed seventy five pages of pantoum poetry alone between ‘22-’24.

[The stack of paper was so thick, I had to split it into three sections to staple through it!]

…Another recent day, a roll of tape in one hand and a fresh watercolor in the other, I thought— “Hmm, I’m running out of room to hang new work!…I wonder what I should do with all this art??”…

⭐️ I had an entire catalogue’s worth of original works on paper filling my walls.

[If you’ve been waiting for an original piece, consider upgrading to a paid subscription for early access— I will be sharing available works with you soon. You can read more about upcoming membership changes here, but paid folks will always have early access to art sales!]

A prompt for you:

How do you know when it’s time to slip your skin? To complete a cycle and step into the next one? Does it just happen to you or are you actively involved in the turning? What conditions make for good closure? What conditions make for good beginnings? What seems like it’s ending and beginning for you right now? What good advice do you have for yourself to navigate this transition? Take a few quiet minutes, fill a page or spin a poem or draft a spell with whatever comes up. Please share if you feel so moved!

*AND!: You can still call the Oracle Line and read your work. +1 (503) 893-8199 — Messages left there eventually filter their way through the rocks and soil, interweaving and mixing with the voices that came before and after them until they re-emerge in new form— a mystical, co-creative audio transmission fed entirely by your magic.

happy endings & beginnings!

xo,