Purgation
Dear Reader.
If you are new here, welcome to my Substack. This episode is the penultimate before I quit it with excerpts from the book I’m working on “Glottis: Love Letter to the Open wound”.
If you are the kind of person who wants things to make sense, you may want to go back to the beginning.
Thanks for being here…
This text is supposed to be a love letter. A letter in the form of a story that might say something about how to suffer less. Little one: one thing I have learned for sure is that holding on to pain leads to more pain. Resisting the urge to release what needs to be released, will absolutely lead to more suffering.
I keep saying, “I am not ready” to share the parts of the story that are most painful. This has not been some literary device. Nor is it because the most painful parts aren’t actually that interesting to write about. At least for me.
What can you say about a birth and a death? One heart stops, the other continues. A body comes out of a body, after all. Aren’t they all the same?
Yes, and No.
This penultimate week will be a purge. An ejaculation of these most abject parts that need to get out of me and into the world in order to move on into the next phase. It’s going to be gross. And take some words. You have been warned.
I am so grateful to you reader. Writing these words is purgation. Hitting publish. Catharsis. If it gets too much. You can look away. I will never know.
Purgation.
Purification or cleansing."the purgation by ritual violence of morbid social emotions"
(in Catholic doctrine) the spiritual cleansing of a soul in purgatory.
(HISTORICAL) the action of clearing oneself of accusation or suspicion by taking an oath or undergoing an ordeal.
Evacuation of the bowels brought about by taking laxatives.
(Oxford Dictionary)
3. ….We did it all, baby….
The labour began spontaneously. At 23 weeks 2 days, just before midnight. The same day that had begun with a suddenly rescheduled 8am consultation with the head of the clinic. The same day I’d been denied the abortion I did not want to be asking for, on the grounds that the Chefartz’ was confident that the pregnancy would improve and so would Leo. The same day we had prepared ourselves for another month in hospital. The same day we adjusted to the reality of a long stay in the NICU, but that Leo would make it, in the Head-doctors estimation, as far as the 28th week. That Leo would very likely live. The day I was so relieved I floated on air.
Babies born in the 23rd week have roughly a 30% survival rate. And a much smaller rate of surviving without serious injury or disability. There are many steps in these days and hours that have different decision trees available based on whether or not the child is considered a citizen yet, which in Germany is 24 weeks. Or 500 grams. Whichever comes first. Before they become a citizen, the mother can decide about which procedures she wants performed to her body or baby or not. Afterwards the doctors can make certain choices for the child’s wellbeing, over the mother’s wishes, if they deem it necessary.
I had, for example, decided to have a vaginal birth. This choice was mine before 24 weeks. But if I’d gone into labour 5 days later, they would have performed a C section no matter what. The kind of C-section that is often performed for very premature babies, cuts a big cross through the belly rather than the normal single horizontal incision across the “bikini line”. It is best for the child’s chances but risky for the mother. It could prevent me from carrying another child.
The big thing that concerned me was the issue of “comfort care”. So long as Leo was born before the 24 week mark, it would be up to me if we wanted to let her go naturally or attempt to “beat her into life”. Before 24 weeks we would be allowed to give her “comfort care” - an after birth protocol that would allow nature to take its course painlessly. The other option, if she was born alive, would be trying to force open the wet air sacks of her already-smaller than average amphibious lungs, rolling out her spine and and shoving stents, tubes and catheters into her tiny sphincters and arteries. These procedures are all pretty new. Just a few years ago. Being born this early was a certain death sentence. Now, if the child is born before 24 weeks, the mother can decide. After that the doctors have to use all means available to keep the child alive. Leo was delivered at 23 weeks, 6 days. We were in every sense, a limit case.
There are a limited range of painkillers available for labouring people in a hospital setting. Before things got complicated, in birth class, we learned about a long list of options to try. The Philosopher and I visited a hospital where they had water baths in the birthing rooms, and aerial yoga slings and hammocks for hanging off. We had hoped to give birth there. We learned about laughing gas and the many different pain relief offerings. These might seem ridiculous until you’ve felt what a relief it can be to be surrounded by warm water or to let gravity take your hips while deep in the most terrible pain human beings normally endure. The hospital where Leo was born allowed only 3 options for painkillers: Paracetamol. Opioids. A full epidural. I have a life-long fear of anesthesia. There was no way I was taking opioids or being totally numb while I was in labour. For four and a half days, I only had paracetamol.
My hospital did not have water baths or yoga slings in their birthing rooms. These kinds of mother-centered offerings are apparently only permissible when the birth is uncomplicated. For healthy mothers. Now… if you’re unhealthy. You need a serious hospital. You don’t need any of that frilly stuff. Why would someone having an already traumatic experience need a comfortable, low stress environment to labour in. Those of us malfunctioning and unworthy, we don’t need relief. We just need to be clean.
Leo was born in a delivery room with a short bed-with-a-raised-back where I could sit half up. Fluorescent lighting. And not much else. Except the doctor I had already learned to distrust, and his watch.
“Traumatophilia involves a revivification of trauma, and that is easily confused with compulsive repetition or destructiveness.” (Avgi Saketopoulou)
A human animal can turn itself inside out when desperate enough to release what needs expressing. As I write, things I can not feel are felt. You would not believe how much of this “episode” was written in the middle of the night in the gaps between dreams.
I need to be able to feel to remember. I need to remember if I’m to escape reliving the experience in the secret of my body every day of my life.
The muscles that surround the glottal opening, like all muscles, have a relaxed and a contracted position. Remaining in one state too long brings about atrophy. The sphincters move from state to state, at as many speeds as a body can imagine.
Abduction, is the bringing apart from the midline. The opening. The point of clearance. The separation of what calls to be pressed together. Where contraction, the effort of the previous gesture, relaxes into rest.
Adduction is the closure of the same portal towards the median line. The coming together of a muscle or sphincter through which expressive potential might pass or stop.
For the glottis, the repetition of moving between these two forms creates phonation. When it works, we have flow phonation. “Good singing”. The active and continued connection between these folds and their negation brings about communication, creativity, carnality. All this time, the refrain has been with me in the background: singing is love.
Love, as in what emotions researcher Barbara Fredrickson calls “the preoccupying and strong desire for further connection, the powerful bonds people hold with a select few and the intimacy that grows between them, the commitments to loyalty and faithfulness”.
Phonation, the rapid, periodic, opening and closing of the glottis, is a bonded call for continued, intimate connection between two vocal folds, reaching across the inconsolable gap of the glottal lack.
If this is true, the longing between Abduction and Adduction must be passion.
Open. Close. Open. Close. Suffering is one state’s yearning for the other.
Passion means “to suffer”. It comes from the Greek "to suffer, to be acted upon” and late Latin’s reference to the Christian notion of passio. The Passion of Christ, etc.
The pain caused by the futile, inconsolable gap that is desire.
I learned this fact in an episode of “Killing Eve”. The TV detective show about hot murderous lesbians compulsively chasing after and trying to kill each other. It was the series I was watching during those weeks in hospital.
I remember the day I realised I might be about to give birth to “Leo the Leo”. I thought that was a bit cruel. I couldn’t remember the dates for Leo. I looked it up. I googled “July 27th zodiac sign”. Took a screen shot.
My “sign” hopelessly (accurately?), designates me “Aries: The Ram”. My mother is a Scorpio. According to her due date, Leo should have been one too. As I write this evening the full moon in Scorpio streams through the window. The “pink moon” in Scorpio.
Now I’m just pointing at the night sky, screaming “love me”. I want to connect! Make me part of your story! The grain of my voice futile with passion.
Enough with the distractions. Put that busy head of yours into the lion’s mouth. Feel it. Suffer.
“Your children are not your children. They are the son’s and daughters of life’s longing for itself”. Jubran Khalil Jubran.
When I went into labour it was Monday midnight. I called the Philosopher. He was in bed with the Burlesque dancer. I heard her voice in the background.
The memory of this call stays. Comes to me at night.
When the Philosopher got to the hospital, he was stoned. He tried to make himself useful. But also kept laying down on the birthing mat. And passing out. I needed the birthing mat. For the giving birth. Someone removed him. A nurse? I told the nurse he was a betrayer. Put him in the hallway.
That felt good. To hit him where he deserves it, to wash him in my blood, in the public square.
Catharsis. Aristotle again. The evacuation of menstrual fluid, or other reproductive material, from the patient. A controlled discharge of bloodlust.
It was surreal that for the duration of my stay in hospital the nurses had been angry at the Philosopher for being too close, for our togetherness overstaying visiting hours, our laughter, for his getting in bed with me. Snuggling. Against protocol. And now when I was labouring, he was absent.
Wait. Is this the same guy?
Am I only now mentioning how present he was during the hospital stay because I am ready to release my rage for how absent he was in that moment when I went into labour? Have I been painting a picture of his being completely useless the whole time, because he was so very useless this one time it hurt the most? No, it was not just that one time. It was this clusterfuck of a failed polyamorous constellation that was an obscene torture I blame him for adding to a situation that would be traumatic for anyone even under the best circumstances. Its that it still makes my skin crawl thinking of him laying next to someone who wanted nothing to do with our child, in the bed we use to share, while I was in hospital. While I was labouring for the birth of our daughter.
Fair point. I forgive myself.
But you may be surprised to hear that while we are no longer a couple the Philosopher is still here in the background. A deranged wind up doll that never gives up contributing to the thinking that goes into this writing. Helping me edit. Massaging the theory. Taking his punishment.
When he read the above account of that awful Monday night, he quietly told me “that is not what happened.” I did not believe him. In my memory he passed out more or less as soon as he arrived. I fact checked. The Doula Caracol confirmed his story. Turns out me and my anger are not reliable narrators.
Let’s try that again:
The philosopher arrived quickly after that phone call. For the first few hours it was just the two of us and the blood and the screaming, him massaging me, trying to help, listening to me rage at him for being such a piece of shit. For being in bed with someone else when I went into labour. After this insane rollercoaster of a day that began with our thinking Leo was dying, and asking to terminate the pregnancy, then being denied the termination, then being given this new, rosy prognosis by the head of the clinic. The relief, the reconfiguring of our expectations for the coming days, weeks, months, years, the rest of our lives. All before 9am.
It was in this state of rupture he had smoked a joint with the other woman he was, perhaps against all of our wills, in love with. And now, suddenly, contrary to all expectations I was in labour.
Once the Doula arrived and “took over” my care with her confidence and skills, it was then, that the Philosopher began to shut down. He describes it as “self defense”. That his nervous system was so overloaded it shut down to preserve his life. I remember his hands kept reaching for me, trying to massage me, like a deranged wind up doll continuously running out of steam. His head would drop. And then his body. We were trying to move him out of the way, but the malfunctioning doll wanted to be close to me.
Once we got him out into the hallway, the doula, Caracol, and I went to work. We gently danced, cried, sang and changed positions for another few hours until the contractions began to slow. We began to think, perhaps Leo was not ready. The labour stalled after 8 hours. Maybe it was a false alarm. As things were winding down, a nurse tried to hook the CTG machine around my belly once more, to measure for the presence of a fetal heart beat. Instead there were Leo’s feet. Kicking through my belly. Shouting with her pointed arches: Do not give up on me!
What I describe above was “Part 1” of 3. In total, it took 4 and 1/2 days. Not continuously. There were 3 “Labours” between which contractions slowed down or stopped. I was able to sleep. To eat. Meet with doctors and counsellors and sign papers and make plans. Even write.
The “second labour' on the afternoon and evening of July 26th was our shining moment. It was strangely gentle, psychedelic. I felt my body had learned so much on the Monday, by the Wednesday we had flow phonation. A performance we’d rehearsed for. The team took turns. The first shift was with the Doula. Progress was slow, and the doctors allowed me to stay in my hospital room. We passed the time pleasantly and painfully enough. We felt strong.
Then there was a shift change. I felt full of love. Positively exploding with serotonin and oxytocin. Leo, the Philosopher and I, spent most of the night naked in the hospital bathroom. Me mostly on all fours, in the bottom of the shower stall. She was inside me. He was behind me. Using all his techniques. And here it must be said, his performance was extraordinary. He reached in to release and palpate every inch of every muscle around my perineum, my vulva, my screaming fucking sacrum. Held me as I cried. Applied transcendent forms of pressure. He stayed for hours on his knees, keeping me warm, getting me whatever I needed. Several times a nurse came in to check I was ok. It had been going on for such a long time, with no real progress in my dilation. They looked embarrassed to see us in the shower together. I could not have cared less. It made me laugh. Laughter was such good medicine.
The pain had been so great for so long I surrendered entirely. I accepted this pain as my own powerful reality. And then it was gone. I could not feel it any more. I no longer had any sense of the difference between pleasure and pain. I willed that Leo would have her way. Whatever that was. I welcomed every wave. The philosopher was holding me. We held them together.
In the midnight we all fell asleep curled up in my hospital bed.
On the 27th of July 2023. The labour had stopped. It had been 3 days. Over two rounds. It was warm that morning. I was more tired than I ever remember being. I had a dead body inside me.
At breakfast the CTG machine confirmed it. No feet this time.
There is something of the sublime to knowing you are a living human being united with a non-living human being. To be both dead and alive.
Later that afternoon, I wrote Leo a letter.
“Dear Leo.
I understand now that there is a time for every thing. That every contradictory thing can come to be true given enough time, and enough love and enough pain. I feel your presence, though [the Philosopher] tells me I woke at dawn to tell him that your spirit had gone.
The truth is that, years ago, I looked up scenarios like this with a morbid fascination. I imagined that a woman in this situation would be desperate to eject the dead child from her body, that she would want all the drugs, to dull the pain, and make it fast. But to my surprise here I sit, taking my notes, hand on my belly, feeling my uterus contracting around your body and my cervix flexing and deciding and I am quite peaceful communing with the material remains of necessary suffering. This experience, being what’s left to hold onto of you, and from this journey of relentless misfortune, or fortune. Or just the way my lioness came and went? Soon we all will be set free.”
The sublime quickly became abject. The final round went much quicker than the previous two.
They put some kind of a gel up against my cervix. Then I waited. A friend, Sarah, came to wait with me. We lay in hospital beds together. Cuddling. We made it through 2 episodes of “Killing Eve” before the pain became too distracting. It was gradual. Consistent. More like the very first contraction I had had. One month earlier. When I did not know it was possible for a contraction to last an hour. This one, slowly, lasted two. By the time I realised it had built to something meaningful, the doctors told me, you were coming now. My portals open.
The glottis is a wound between ephemeral moments of completion. It is this dance between opening and closing, that gives us voice.
Study after study shows the value of singing for physical and emotional health. One study showed that women who vocalized through their labour, with the help of a trained physiotherapist were 67% less likely to suffer perineal trauma or be subjected to an episiotomy than the control group during a vaginal birth. If they were able to keep their Glottis in motion, rather than bearing down or holding their breath, they were quite likely able to save themselves from this painful and traumatic procedure. One that leaves many women with pelvic floor pain, sexual disfunction, and fecal incontinence that can go on for decades.
“Mother loosen my tongue or adorn me with a lighter burden.” Audre Lorde
The frequency of our voices is made by the speed and qualities of air interacting with flesh and mucous, trying to escape from the high pressure environment of the lungs up, into the outside world. The regularity of the oscillation is key.
There is no audible pitch without periodicity.
My mouth was opening, but
without contractions.
My body, now familiar with
the feeling of cervical
contractions, was confused.
The waves we’d used
for getting one place to another,
never came again. Now
it was just the parting of the sea.
Fucking stop this.
Use your tools.
In two three four. Out two three four.
I said goodbye to my friend. The nurses prepared me for the delivery room. The philosopher appeared, as did the Doula. The pain continued in weird, un-wave-like gestures. More of a continual clamp. Like my body was being forced open and did not know what to do. I tried all the positions, nothing moved. The cervix was open they told me. The pain was always. There was no break. They said, it’s all open, ride a wave and push. There were no waves. I did not know when or how to push.
They tried to put Oxytocin in my vein. To speed things up. After some time and no change, we realised my arm had swollen up where the needle had been incorrectly inserted. No waves were forthcoming. It was taking too long. Everyone was starting to panic. “Infection”they said. Infection. Everyone in a uniform seemed worried about infection.
I began to push anyway. Fuck contractions. I’m an opera singer. I practiced my pelvic floor breathing. “Splat” like Janice Chapman, the great operatic pedagogue. There were no waves, but I was high, and I had my techniques. I was convinced I could push Leo out with the force of my will alone.
I almost succeeded. You were half out when the the doctor I had already learned to distrust told me I was out of time. They were going cut you out of me.
My cervix got shy. Closed around your neck.
I told the doctor I was afraid of anesthetic. That if he really had no choice but to cut me, if there really was no other way, I wanted to feel it. He told me that was not possible. A fight began. In retrospect I realize this was an insane request. It’s hard to put into words how medical professionals look at you when you’re demanding to be sliced open wide awake and with a dead body half in, half out of you.
With Leo going cold, the doctors were panicking. It was taking too long. They were worried about infection. I was worried about his hands reaching into me, prying my vagina apart, pushing and pulling against the neck of my uterus and the neck of my child. The “Muttermund”. Every mouth a portal.
The morning after reading a draft of this post, the Philosopher reminds me, a detail I’d forgotten: The doctor had on a giant gold watch. He thinks it was a Rolex? Philippe Patek? Something expensive. Which he was continuously checking. Which he kept on his wrist as he shoved his full fist deep into my vagina. That I was saying the metal was hurting me. That he did not seem to care. In the months afterwards, I found research shows that doctors using their hands to pull the baby out significantly increases the likelihood of vaginal and perineal trauma.
I feared, if this kept going Leo would be decapitated by my cervix. Do we still call it decapitation if the person is already dead? Do we still call it a person if they’re a fetus, 23 weeks, 6 days? 1 day before the 24 week deadline of personhood? We weren’t yet sure, but we would see, yes she was 67 grams over the line. 567 grams. A person, yes. Birth certificate. yes. Death Certificate. yes. Head attached to body. yes. Neck, a bit to the side.
The gold-watch doctor tells me to squat on top of the bed, cervix closed, Leo dangling out of me. He reaches in to pull to pull to pull. Nothing works but panic and humiliation. We begin to argue. He pushes paper and pen into my hands. He must cut her out. I refuse.
He leaves the room to “consult someone from legal”
As soon as they leave the Doula starts with her literal fucking magic. Trying as best she can in the sterile delivery room to make it cosy. She turns off the fluoros. Throws her scarf over a lamp. She massages my belly, coos soothingly and tells me to get comfortable. With serious brevity she tells the Philosopher and I:
“Kiss like your lives depend on it” - and then she left.
We kissed. Like life depended on it. After a few seconds. I felt my insides blossom. We kept kissing - I was pushing, kissing and crying at the same time.
And out you came, little one. We erupted with laughter.
The Doula later told me she’d been outside, trying to keep the doctors from interrupting us. They were very angry with her. Once she heard the laughter she knew we had succeeded. A kiss and my body’s oxytocin had prevailed over the failure of the needle, the fist, the knife.
Shocked and uncomfortable, the doctors asked what we could possibly be laughing about?
Sternenkind
When a child is born dead in Germany they call them “Sternenkinder” which means Star child. When she came, we burst spontaneously into laughter. I still don’t know where it came from? Stellar Ejaculate? Perhaps we were just amazed at what love seemed capable of doing?
Our “star child” cold and blue was placed on my chest. I loved her. I could barely breathe. Your water in my blood. Your stars under my skin. She was the most terrifying thing I ever beheld.
The Philosopher’s favourite book is “The Little Prince”. In the final scene the Prince tells his friend not to be sad. That he is not about to die, but is merely returning home to his star. That he will be up there forever, laughing in the sky:
“And at night you will look up at the stars. It's too small, where I live, for me to show you where my stars is. It's better that way. My star will just be one of the stars, for you. So you'll like looking at all of them. They'll all be your friends. And, besides, I am going to make you a present...' He laughed again…. People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they're nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they're problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you'll have stars like nobody else. When you look up at the sky at night, since I'll be living on one of them, since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it'll be as if all the stars are laughing. You'll have stars that can laugh!' And he laughed again….And when you're consoled (everyone eventually is consoled), you'll be glad you've known me. You'll always be my friend. You'll feel like laughing with me. And you'll open your window sometimes just for the fun of it...And your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you're looking up at the sky. Then you'll tell them, "Yes, it's the stars; they always make me laugh!" And they'll think you're crazy. It'll be a nasty trick I played on you...'
(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry- The Little Prince)
Then came what was for me the worst moment in a long series of worst moments. After the birth, the placenta should follow more or less immediately. The “after-birth”. My placenta did not. More arguments ensued. My fear of anesthesia was no longer an excuse. This time I had no choice. They were going to surgically empty my uterus, to cut out the placenta. They told me I could die if they did not immediately remove that Judas of an organ whose bleeding, whose failure to close its membrane, was the reason we were here in the first place. They took Leo’s body away. Prepared me for the operating theatre.
The scene transition, you’ve heard before. It’s a refrain that comes to me from time to time.
Your father rocking back and forth, in the corner, on the floor, in the orange light, holding a basket, a body, 50 bpm. Me facing the ceiling feeling, hearing, rubber wheels continuously hitching some groove, accenting an edge, twice a second…Rolling me away.
They put a needle in my spine. After a minute or so I could not feel anything below my collar bones. I could sense something of the orientation of me being lumped around, see them fumbling and scraping behind a curtain. Hear the worried tone of their voices as it went on beyond the 10 minutes they said it would take, was it 20? The philosopher says it was at least 40.
I had no idea. I was disappearing. It started with moans and tremors, then I knew I was screaming. I observed myself as being something that was screaming. I do not know if that was actually what was happening. I saw the doctors were scared. They kept coming to check I could not feel. I could not feel. Exactly. After 4 days in labour with no pain killers stronger than paracetamol. And the damp feeling of your dead body warming itself on my warm body. I could not feel. I was so scared. I felt so alone and so scared. I saw shadows coming and going, in the corner of my vision something was getting into scrubs.
Then the Philosopher was standing over me. We looked into the sphincters of each others eyes. I felt certain I was going to die. A few seconds later I could not decide. I vacillated between trying to breathe, and trying to accept death.
Then he started counting.
The Philosopher began to demonstrate the breathing techniques we had sometimes used together in our breath work and pranayama:
In, two, three, four,
Hold two, three, four.
He counted as he saw me slipping away. He counted until he was just about gone himself.
Then, when I saw him slipping, from some automatic place, whenever I saw he was about to go down, my voice reached out for his.
We began to take turns “almost dying”.
In, two, three, four.
Hold, two.
Out, two, three, four.
Hold two.
We held each other with our shitty membranes:
In, two, three, four.
Hold, two.
Out, two, three, four.
Hold two.
In two, three, four,
Hold, two…..
I don’t know how long we did this for, exchanging counts until one or the other of us almost passed out? 10 minutes? an hour?
Today, as I hit publish, it is 9 months since Leo died. The reasons to celebrate do not cease. Death does not run out of mile markers. Humanity’s capacity to make meaning out of that which should be beyond meaningless, is relentlessly compelling.
The constellation we call “Leo” is a bunch of burning and freezing matter floating light years apart, held together by nothing stronger than the collective imagination of humans repeatedly staring into the great mystery of the night sky. Reaching to quell their awe and fear with stories, generation after generation. From which process emerges a meaning making system so complex and personal, many folks now attribute concrete personality traits to the humans born under particular angles of sky. We tell potential partners, “don’t worry I’m an Aries sun, but my moon is in Taurus” while we make our futile little orbits.
Through the 6 months of pregnancy, 2 months of bleeding, 1 month of hospitals, 4 and a 1/2 days of labour, and now this black hole of loss, I keep trying to make meaning. I lean upon my training. I try to solve a problem, sing a song.
“I am going to make you a present... He laughed again…. [all] People have stars, but they aren't the same. For travelers, the stars are guides. For other people, they're nothing but tiny lights. And for still others, for scholars, they're problems. For my businessman, they were gold. But all those stars are silent stars. You, though, you'll have stars like nobody else. When you look up at the sky at night, since I'll be living on one of them, since I'll be laughing on one of them, for you it'll be as if all the stars are laughing.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry- The Little Prince)
In Saint-Exupéry’s “the Little Prince”, the characters relate to the mysteries of life through the lens of the their own tools and techniques. The Prince, his rose, the narrator, the fox, travelers, scholars, and businessmen, turn stars into laughter, guides, problems, or gold. It’s probably obvious with which characters identify. I have a habit of playing the scholar, singing this loss as if death were a problem for solving.
A wiser mother might make more time for laughing at open windows at night. Perhaps that is the next stage? I will see how much brighter the heart, might open.
“… your friends will be amazed to see you laughing while you're looking up at the sky. You'll tell them, "Yes, it's the stars; they always make me laugh!" And they'll think you're crazy.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry- The Little Prince)
The brightest “star” in the constellation Leo, “Regulus”, is not a star at all. It is actually a ‘quadruple star system.’ Organised in 2 pairs. Approximately 79 light years from our sun. The human invention “Leo” contains multitudes. Beyond the stars we see and name with naked eye and layman’s tongue there are extra-solar planets. Carbon Stars. Red Giants. White dwarfs. Red Dwarfs. Leo’s Ring. Deep sky objects. Galaxies: Messier 65, Messier 66, Messier 95, 96, 105, and NGC 3628. Galactic Halos. Spiral galaxies, Barred spiral galaxies, Elliptical galaxies. The “Huge-Large-Quasar-Group” which is the second largest structure in the observable universe. And many young, open clusters.
The day before Leo’s funeral, our dear friend Nico came to my house and tattooed the constellation “Leo” on my chest. We put her in the soft place under my breast-bone, so anyone attentive enough could see the stars beat with the blood of my blood. Each pulse, for the rest of my life, journeying from my heart downwards into the rest of my body. So that with every beating breath, my necessary matter, would pass by her stars, from my lungs to my heart, and out again. The rhythm expressing all that it must. Every beating star quivering with memory for the life that came and went inside mine.
I release you. Love. But you keep coming.