This piece is an autofictional seed for the Autofiction x Worldbuilding submissions call. It inspired this other piece.

The Hermit and The Moon (Tarotredactyl)

You might very well have been one of the deaths of me.

I have a marauders maps of navigating secrecy and solitude, handrawn over my many lifetimes, tattooed upon my palm in the broken lifelines. I just need the lantern to guide my way through their landscapes, so bland, infused with diffused essential oil cocktails, and perfect. First thought I was crooked, as if my head’s on askew, tilted quizzically, but set to plumb, the odd angles all set to safer 90’s and Colt 45 degrees so it won’t seen so askew, the film tweaked in editing so everything is plumb and square. A movie set backlot and stage pieces based on the clickbait of Better Homes and Burdens. It’s all so beige, sage, nuetral and faux.

You might as well have been one of the deaths of me.

I know the hidden desires and secrets, clasped like rosaries by widows at matins in midweek. Unrepentant, untethered, I am undaunted by shame. I need barely enough light to see by. I go by feel. Fondling my way through everything. I go by my feels, all of them, all the time, ceaseless. I have answered the right questions of the enigmas, danced in drunken riddle-waltzes with the Sphinx as the suns rose over alien horizons, been torn apart by maenads, Puritans, real narcissists, and been fucked well by more than a couple madmen, sociopaths (one court-established even!) and schizophrenics. It’s the unreal that is most real. The secret worlds inside our skulls, the nooks and crannies of brain matter and their mysteries within. The only absolutes are there are no scientifically unprovable absolutes- grey infinity in grey matter.

You may very well have be one of the deaths of me.

I love the beauty of the shadows, the sacredness of profanity, the storms under still clouds, the tempests in every teapot and electric kettle. I am the Hermit under the moon. Huntress and Hunter, Salome dancing flamenco in the courtyard beneath a night sky on fire, her teeth castanets and the head of John the Baptist as an unwieldy maraca, a night sky with strange stars, a night sky without stars, I reflect my own light. A shadow-draped ruin lit by a single flame.

You may as well be one of the deaths of me.

I am the keeper of secrets, I consume they up, leave nary a crumb as the motherfucking revered reverend mother at the tea set. I shall be mother and eat the crumbs you leave behind, whatever you spilled sucked up eagerly, slurped up like a shop vac of consolation, empathy and sympathy, each speck, every drop, subsumed and substinence. None shall ever escape my confidentiality. I am a black hole, I absorb, I draw in. Then I encode, encrypt it. It is unbreakable in my enigma body machine. I keep all secrets. I hear all confessions. I listen. Whack me with a hammer, hear that full dull impact, I am the sounding board.

You possibly will be the death of me.

If I gifted /shared intimacy, you are special, you are rare, you are mine and the feast, provided you never corner me or block all the egresses. I am relentless and will wake you from sleep sucking out your soul in the only forgivable way to wake someone from a deep sleep, like a succubus crouched between your thighs. I am the haven of small heavens and daytrips to Hell. I am the port of call me. I am the Power and the Glory-hole.

You will be the death of me.

I may obfuscate at times, be obtuse, oblique and German Expressionist, Langian, even Wieneian, black and white on my worst days. On my best, I am soft, bare and vulnerable, porcelain fragile, Crystal stemware delicate, so keep that just between us. I have secrets too, in puzzle boxes I want solved so someone gets the _________ [redacted] treasure hidden within behind the countless panels, levers, labyrinths, sliders, word games, quadratic lacquered equations and cloisonné traps.

Give me one precious tender moment or a good line even, a cigarette, and a ice cold brandy Alexander, bonus points if a frappe, with dark chocolate or coffee strip rimmed and drizzled, and I can survive on it for weeks.

Ones such as these me alive –

“a big hug. and a bigger one. and a bear hug. and smothering. and a cuddle. and a long snuggle on the couch blissfully exchanging, without a word, our obvious psyche connect electric.”

“none of who(m) [ehgods ghastly stop attacking me Potbelly –dats de name of me parrot — he’s so anti-chicago manual of style ye know, as am i, what have i done!] is jewish. or really short. or i went to norristown high [redacted] w/and will smother for a few minutes in person before we die even if it be on one of our deathbeds god forbid almighty shelley — that talented female one, not the jealous swinger — absent one thing that in restricting their very breathing held women’s achievements back, the damn victorian corset, och, prey i be right, sometimes with all this rum i get confused with the renaissance corset ye know lass — as she tells them all to hell and kills lord byron that hack. or is gnostic. or whatever you were and are. i say a free spirit. wait. no, none jews. or female. or i care unreservedly for.”

“Within that sense, a holiday hug from me if you can stand that sort of thing — me, I hate leaving the house only as much as I hate returning to it — along with Reality-skewing wishes cleaving your Perceptions unmistakably from any of mine (except, well, that one time, & okay I accept the bed was filthy & sans sheets or most stuffing, but that we . . . you know, so passionately or perhaps simply desiring dumb as reflex, right after what you called work in July swelter sun beating through the open-wide blinds encrusted with dust damped & danked into glue, unstoppable into the evening, the sun below the lowest tenements — I can not, I will not accept that neither of us never noticed we were doing it on top of & below & around & soon covered with & within a huge pile of fresh soft butter-spread rank dog-shit until the knock on the door some unknowable time after). So I’ll “share” that in my limited partially un-accepting manner-less manner, but the rest as before & remaining I wish not even parallel, Your Own Real thank God & especially for this season I hope prove to be relaxing holidays for you “

( I swear that never happened, except in his wonderful head. I never even kissed him! Not once in all those years, all the pity for it, god it would have been spectacular and violent and beautiful and incendiary and magnificently self-destructive! There was 800.4 miles between us when he wrote this and I had not seen him since the 20th century!Damn it, I’d loved/have loved it/him!)

“When I asked if they knew his significant other was Jewish he said “yes I told <blank> that you were Jewish and the most intelligent person in the world since Harlan Ellison was dead”. I was rendered speechless and my eyes filled with dumb womanly tears and this weird statement was how he really feels and his opinion of me.” That was nourishment and love too.

“Wowzers, Randi.powerful expurgation. vomitus maximus. what kind of tea were you waitin’ for, holy sweet moses of fire and joiussance. what did you do after writing this? is there . . . glistening viscera in which one can see the reflection of your unblinking vulva?” It’s my souls food.(I’d have eaten him alive and gone back for desert)

You, especially you of the insane letters, might still very well have been one of the deaths of me, but “hineni hineni, I’m ready, my lord” (Leonard Cohen). I always want it darker and I am the Lady of Darkness and Flame. I’m your girl. Escaped from the Magdalene Laundries. Dancing in someone’s forest green suit I rented for campus drag day with a blowjob down the college halls forever. I feel you thru the years and miles and want to hold you regardless. Moth, flame, hook, eye. Damnation. Sing it along with me! The Aries Hermit, Leo rising, and the Sagittarius Moon.

Agape, a gape, gawking at a gap between the universes- a gap, no thigh gap ever- a poetess.