down and in.

with a stringy, golden brown roast of thick mozzarella-cheddar on top.

Dusk, 16th July, 2026. Thursday, heavy-boned, sore from taking my body to her farthest all week.

I am gyrating my hips along the monsoon breeze, naked in my room, looking into my eyes in the mirror, to the most voluptuous of wordless melodies. I notice that old, old scars now make constellations on my buttcheeks, how could I ever have thought this was something to fix? My skin is the darkest where my thighs part, what else would befit the path to where I contain a cosmos? A portal without darkness would be so boring. Could I dare to move slower in my life, and still have all that I desire? Could I dare to do everything I do and wish to do, slower, and still be abundant? I have wrestled with this question for years, but in the way of lovebites and moans and knotted hair and a sacrum damp with sweet, fruity musk, imprinted on white sheets that never stay as white as the sanitised Shoulds I imbibed from perfect hotels where everybody stays and nobody lives, lingers, sinks. Down and in. I have been fascinated with this phrase, the past few days. A woman is at her most potent when she takes life and alchemises it down and in, down and in, down and in. When she steps back from projecting her energy outward and front, always pushing, always pouring out in full speed, propelling outwards and forwards and further away from the pace of her skin and bones, exiting her body. Magnetism, receptivity, the dense magic of creation, I believe we become the strongest of portals when we return to the yin way, downwards and inwards. That is where our alchemical magic is at it’s strongest. Could I dare to inhabit my life as I inhabited my body in dance today? To stop looking over my shoulder at the locked door, what if somebody needs me, what if somebody knocks to ask something of me, what if I fail to rush to be of service and of availability immediately, what then? It takes so many tries, to pull one ear back from who might need you, and inhabit music and body and actually feel how tired your flesh is, from god knows how long, for twenty minutes. Languid, heavy as a dark cloud waiting for thunderbolt to penetrate, so she may finally burst and flow forth. It is perhaps the most taboo of all modern desires and kinks and fetishes, to try doing living creating being existing a little bit slower, on purpose. I have always lived with a fire within me that wants to blaze forth into life every spark of an idea bright, burning, big. To slow down, to pickle, to ferment, to marinate, to linger, to edge, oh it is difficult and delicious. It is the counterpart I must cultivate. To tend and attend to the flame within, and yet contain it’s pouring. To make myself heavier, denser, down and in. So that what pours out is forged longer. Considered, wielded, charged with even more mystical eroticism. Earlier this morning I was exchanging voice notes with a sister witch, about the fragrances that are flavouring our lives at the moment. I described to her how my nights are jasmine, but I am being pulled to rose. Rose is dense, high priestess, overwhelming even. Rose is intense. Rose walks into a room like Aphrodite, I say to her. “If I’m too much, choke.” A woman deliberately craving a marinating in rose is a woman who has crossed an unprecedented (for her) threshold of unapologetic taking up space. I only wear rose privately, for myself, for now. I still fear coming on too strong, blooming in rose oil and rose perfume in public. Slowing down everything. Taking life and bringing it down and in, letting it stir and swirl in my hips, inhabiting my thighs longer than my thoughts, leaning back and sinking into slow and rose-dense, rose-lush, rose-heady, out of my head, in my kidneys and my love handles, it calls to me like an assignment. It beckons to me, and it smells like the perfect amount of shame and guilt, that all cauldrons with gold sediment at the bottom have. I am stripping down my days and my life to only and only the tightest, sharpest sliver of what I really, deeply, madly, truly desire. What really feels good. I am about to ghost so many people, but not stop loving them. I feel viscerally unable to be accessible. I can’t make it, I couldn’t text back, I can’t right now. I am in my room, dancing, staring at my ass and thinking about how beautiful it is.

The music that put me under a spell today, that I took from moving naked while the golden hour sun licked along my navel, to cooking potatoes, cut sinfully slow, in a gravy of thick, peppery, garlicky onion and tomato, with a with a stringy, golden brown roast of thick mozzarella-cheddar on top.