BY STEPHANIE ATHENA VALENTE
“I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.” – L.M. Montgomery
“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” – Albert Camus
Elpida derives from the ancient Greek word Ελπίδα and it means hope.
The Strength card from the Rider-Waite deck has two key figures: a woman and a lion. The woman, with an olive wreath crown and an infinity above her head, knowingly pries open the lion’s mouth. She has strength because she is Strength. But, she has hope because she is looking and lingering for something that isn’t rotten. The lion is hope because hope is trust.
Once this card was also called Fortitude. In another deck with dark lips and rites and greyness, this card is called Lust.I think of these things and feel all of these things when I think of Elpida. I have the deepest sense of Elpida in Autumn. It feels like running rivulets and powerful streams. It’s something I can’t hold onto, but it’s always there.
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I am a witch. This is the most honest thing I can tell you.
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I have a dream where the moon is blue and my hair is a chocolate whiskey brown mixed with cinnamon and hunter’s stew. In the dream, it feels like power and change and freedom in a way I can’t really describe when I wake up.
There is a forest and a tarot card – Strength – wedged inside of me. The forest is lush and green and like my dream hair, it’s tinged in molasses brown and red powder and an orange glow. Sometime I don’t know what it means at all. The colors are beautiful and sometimes it’s overwhelming and I don’t know how to quite explain it. Like the dream and the feelings, there’s words and ideas buzzing and bubbling in me like an overflowing pot. I don’t know what to do with it all.
I want my hair to be long and silky like a drawing in a picture book. Longer than long.
When I wake up my hair is still brown. It does not feel like power. Yet.
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Ghosts are more active in the fall. This I know to be true. There’s something exhilarating about the idea of something living and not living at the same time. A person, a mirror, a recording existing through a veil of time and space.
I think of how autumn is said to be the most engaging time for spirits. The veil between our world and their world thins. It’s like a notebook with both sides of the page being written in red and blue ink. The pages bleed into each other. Black ink forms. Do ghosts know they are ghosts? Are they scared? Do they revel in this undead world? Do they watch us? What do they think?
Maybe ghosts are concerned with their own social lives, walking through wallpaper, running up basement steps, humming old tunes to notice us at all. Something different is always possible.
Ever since I was a teen, I’ll stay up late into the night, reading stories about haunted houses. Spectral voices in the dark. Kitchen cabinets that never stay closed. A man or woman lost to the house in death. A feeling that someone is sitting at the foot of the bed. A soul with unfinished business. Music that plays without any records. I read. I consume. I don’t meet any ghosts.
But somehow, I still believe. Yes, they are there.
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In the summertime, I bloom. And in the fall, I bloom too. In the summertime, I am glass, salt water, and waves. My hair is wild. I am the curiosity before a poem.
In autumn, I am smoke and shadows. I am blue moon hair strands and crisp air. I am a secret in a leather jacket. I am tight black pants, boots, and music filled in my ears with purpose. There is a crystal growing inside me. It blooms. The crystal is citrine colored with rough edges. It is not too sharp.
In autumn, I am the ocean reborn. I am a tree. I am temptation and apples. I am a velvet ghost with iron-straight hair. I am the tobacco cologne my lover smells. My mouth is a wand and it commands secrets. I’ll speak a spell to my lover. To you. It ripples with cloves. My voice is lush, like coffee or an empty glass.
In this moment, with yellow and brown leaves, with fall’s whisper, I feel like anything could happen. I could be anything.
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Every fall, I bottle up my curiosities and stir them with metal straws. Add more salt. There is a banshee that lives down the road. A siren floats across the East River. Elves are somewhere, I know it. We’re all spectral lines trying to make our voices heard. I am convinced a dead man lives upstairs, that’s why the living couple goes away every weekend. Cold air rolls in from the water. Sand and soil turns into its own wave beneath my feet. Every fall I am reborn as a poem. This is my life as a witch.
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My power outfit is best described as something sinister is afoot: black jeans, black leather jacket, black boots preferably with a low heel or a platform. You need a little lift. I want to feel sparks under my feet. Required accessories: blood red lipstick, black nails, tobacco cologne, cigarettes. Maybe it’s a little derivative, but it always works.
I meet my lover somewhere between promise and vow. We talk about cemetery histories, new life, typewriters, and lost love letters. I ask my lover if it is possible to fall in love with a ghost.It might be worth trying. To feel floaty and liminal and airy and glassy and electric all at once. We would meet in mirrors and leave secret notes. It’s an affair. A scandal. It’s a poem of hope all on its own. It’s hope because it’s a dream of lust and urgency and it’s a secret just for two people even if one or both of them are dead.
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What is hope? Is it a hot cup of tea that never ends? Perhaps it’s an old diary with passages that are both lovely and sad but even then, I don’t know how the story ends. But, I know the story goes on.
Hope is one day I can play the guitar or the violin. Hope is knowing I’ll hear an enchanting swan song with no body attached to it. Hope is a cigarette break at a house party. A private party of one. Hope is a greenhouse door closing and opening by itself. Hope is hoping the haunting never stops.
-The air is cold and chilly and I can finally wear a jacket again. It’s a protective armor. I am a tough bitch. No one can take this away from me – leather sleeves, enamel pins, lipstick darker than oxidized blood. If I look tough, eventually I’ll have to be tough. And it’s true – I’ve worn the same jacket to job lay-offs that masqueraded as meetings, break ups, and bad dates.