I needed everyone to be quiet.
Including the voice asking myself,I thought you let this go?
Because I had. Less than two seasons ago, I’d sat around a dull Mabon fire, shivering under the light rain, as my coven celebrated the turn into fall. We cast aside what no longer served us. We’d burned it in the flames.
What no longer served me? Heartbreak.
But that was exactly what I was following through on. This was closure, and I was prepared to get rid of it once and for all.
Swallowing the thick sweetness still lingering on my tongue from champagne and baby-blue buttercream frosting, I forced myself to take a deep breath.
Sit tall. Head up. Shoulders back.
I shut my eyes and reached for the first piece of the spell, capturing it in my hands. I whispered the foreboding words of the future instead of only today’s present. I whispered the incantation in sharp syllables and swift understanding about what was going to happen.
His name was already written on the slip of paper, just like the promise to leave behind heartbreak and pain. I could move on with each corner I folded over. I lifted it up above the jar candle. The wick spurted with a yellow, nearly white heat, and the wax began to weep.
I hesitated.
For the first time since beginning this spell, this hex, my brain was quiet. The air was clean and waiting for my next move to be made, just as if life were like any other game to be played with.
Like I had been played with.
You can’t love anyone until you love yourself.The words of every well-meaning mantra book for relationships I’d read but to no avail or results fluttered through my mind. Just like the man whose name I stared down at.
And I hated it all.
A new fire flared in my chest, and any other time, it would cause my goddess to scream in delight.
Because screw that.
I am worthy of love. I am worthy of power. I am worthy of everything.
I dropped the folded strip of paper into the candle flame. The edges shriveled and curled. The name lit first, in the angrily written slashes of his name, following down as surely as my hand.
I watched the entire time. I didn’t look away until it turned to ash and the air felt as if it was vibrating around me as I moved forth.
I barely paused as I suffocated the fire and smashed the wick into soot and smoke, so much that I nearly captured some as I dumped the black ash into the small bottle. Herbs for bad luck, fog, and forgetfulness on all counts were shaken together. I tipped over the tall candle on the left side of me, and black wax sealed it shut.
One step followed another, time and intention held accountable. The world swayed and lifted with what I was doing.
Then, it stopped altogether.
I sat on the floor. Alone. I stared down at the bottle still swirling with smoke and mostly congealed wax beside myBook of Shadows, still opened to the page. I left space, as if somewhere in my unsullied brain, I thought I’d like to jot down a conclusion of how this spell went, like all my others, to provide better dreams and more vibrant color in life and on my clients at the salon.
Only this spell was nothing like those.
My heart thrummed, racing in my chest, as I stared back and forth between the page and the jar. The space heater in the corner and the wind trying to break through the unsealed edges of the glass sliding door were the only sounds in the darkness of my little sanctuary that I’d built to hide from all the outside world.
My breath escaped from my lungs in bursts. “Oh no.”
What did I just do?
My book was bent at the edges, and the candle I’d used to drip wax looked like it must’ve been lit for much longer than I’d thought I’d been sitting there. My mind was quiet. The apartment was quiet.
Rocketing to my feet, I eyed the intention jar still sitting on the floor. It tipped over at my hasty movement.
Oh goddess, what did I just do?
