Saturn, for better and for worse

sometimes saturn is a protective man. other times saturn is a cage. sometimes he is my mother, who is beyond gender, and who scare-protected me out of leaving my house by the time I was four. saturn is stockholm syndrome. it is a dear friend’s teeth cracked and ground down by stress. saturn is my teeth shaking in my mouth. he is the feeling of my hands stiffening with each passing year.

she is walking down the stairs in heels and feeling your knee buckle. saturn is the strong stomach. the knife in your chest when you wake up and the knot in your stomach as well as the friend whose ears untie it. she’s the collar you put around your lover’s neck to make them feel kept, owned, safe. it’s the approval you’d do anything for. it’s my funeral dirge voice. it’s a ring of light, a circle of salt, hope for a better future, deep and boundless love for ideals. it’s waiting for permission to look, permission to speak, permission to get up, and it’s the keys you didn’t know you held yourself. saturn is both the faith that was beaten out of you and the hand that beat you.

it’s the love that goes so deep that it transcends the barriers of time. saturn is the love that lasts. the foundation we can build our home on.

saturn is commune and cult. the devil and the church. it’s the shrugged “good enough” that has never been good enough. it’s the desire to do better, to find the ideal, to strive. it is the community, the society we live in, the ideology we identify with.

saturn is the skin that keeps my bones in, that keeps my muscles from fusing with yours. the walls of a prison or the walls of a home. things that are too small to fit into. boxes with labels. wet boxes with labels made of water. children abandoned. children kept inside. children protected. the cat you’re afraid to let out for fear that she will not come back. the love you’re afraid to give for fear that it will never be returned.

saturn is obsidian, black, judges and gavels, menstrual blood. it is the shame of doing wrong and feeling wrong. they’re the humiliation of effort.

it’s the need to do better. banishing. vanishing. exile. our herd mentality and herd immunity. the box they gave me, the one I burned.

saturn is the true pace of the earth. saturn is the sexual tension that freezes time. she is the breath between my mouth and yours. he’s my boot on your neck and the spit in your mouth and that orwell quote about the boot. he is consent. he is patriarchy. fear. domination. the limit they gave us and the sky we crawled to. the tension between the world we have and the world we want.

and when you’re afraid, you’ll have to be brave.
and vulnerability is bravest of all.