Telling Love Before It’s Too Late: Aries 3 and the Four of Wands
This piece is an experiment in new forms of writing and storytelling.
At this point in my praxis, I’m trying to figure out what might exist outside “The Essay”—forms that can still carry a whole, rigorous, critical thought, but in a way that feels lived, embodied, and textured.
The balance is tricky. Poetry on its own can sometimes feel too empty, aesthetic ornamental. Philosophy, too severed from the real. But neither feels complete to me anymore—not when I’m trying to be fully received.
So: experiments must be conducted.
This one started with Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 11.
I read the myths, wrote down what I saw. Let the images work on me. But instead of staying within the limits of literary interpretation, I did what I always do when the text starts to open: I showed my writing to the dead.
This is a necromantic method. Not symbolic—literal. I asked the figures in the story to respond.
To show me the version of the myth they still wanted told.
The result is somewhere between poetic transmission, philosophical patterning, and mythic “with”nessing. Not quite an essay. Not quite a poem.
This is what happens when I write “with” the dead, not about them.
When I allow those most honorable and mythic ancestors their own right to speak,
as subjects, not objects of adornments, or or abstract symbol of parabolic meaning. I no longer want to treat these bodies as figures I shape to fit my mouth, as if theirs is my story to be told—
but voices I ask to guide me toward the story they still want remembered.
Won’t you please sit by the fire, and remember them with me?
Four of Wands and Alcyone’s Arms as Threshold Form
This story we know.
She runs out to her husband amidst the call to war.
Hair undone. Hands not yet ready to mourn.
She pulls at it anyway—
grief causes such interruption.
Alcyone, his wife, alarmed by the commotion, ran out—
she had not taken time to fix her hair
and kept pulling at it—clung to Ceyx,
her arms around his neck, imploring him
in words and tears to provide assistance
but not go himself, to protect his life
and thus save both of them. [1]
How human, this moment.
So full of body.
She clings—not to stop the storm,
but to hold what trace of love can still be felt.
She builds the canopy with her arms—
a soft architecture stretched across fate.
The marriage bed hums in the fabric.
The battlefield stains the same seams.
This gesture does not choose between them.
They sleep under the same stars
She shelters inside of that knowing.
She holds.
This is the logic of the Four of Wands—
not completion,
but a container.
The first symbolic form of Will that tries to hold coherence
before fate arrives to scatter it.
Ace: the ignition of wanting
Two: the direction it reaches (appetite)
Three: the space between (hunger)
Four: the first form that says—stay (choice)
She builds it quickly—
a structure of arms, of pleading.
It isn’t peace she builds—
but a frame to meet the blow.
If we must come undone,
let us name it with our bodies first—
this merging,
this touch that overtakes us.
Her form marks the threshold
where two bodies collide.
Her desire, to hold a shape inside time
before it vanishes.
This is the thread we follow:
Alcyone loves Ceyx so much
she would break all laws of decorum
to show up naked in her love dressed as grief.
We all know this story.
But I have been asked to trace it
back further. Not all the way back—
just the tip. Edging just a bit further.
One must not rush when digesting grief.
It’s a different kind of light, so to speak.
Luciferian Lineage of Silenced Light
We all know what happens after Alcyone’s arms.
The ship leaves. The storm comes.
Ceyx does not listen.
Kingfisher follows.
But if you turn the page too quickly,
you’ll miss what happens just before.
Right before her entrance
—before any announcement of
war has set in—
Ceyx is telling stories.
His neighbor Peleus is freshly pained.
Exiled. Unspoken gloss of slime
clinging to his skin.
His crime, fratricide,
“with”held, lest he be
exposed
to his shame.
When he got the chance
for an initial meeting with the king,
he went in as a suppliant, holding
a wool-draped olive branch. He told the king
his name and the family he came from,
but did not divulge the killing and lied
about the reason for his flight. [2]
Peleus’ hearted
dove. His innocent
hope, olive—
wrapped in wool,
speaks “with” a pleading
urgency;
Please, build a tent over me.
Thus, the shadow
of Pelegus’ plee
strikes guilt
in the hearted dove
of many. This hope
flies fast in thinking
“Move!
I must find
ground to rest
in feeling.”
I will respect
Pelegus’ desire
for silence only
because, the question
was already asked
“with” the memory
of talons and wings.
What good
is the ground
of food after
flood
if memory
of water now
feels
swollen “with”
a rocking fluid
motion—
quite traumatizing.
So when, to this ruse
Ceyx tender-heartedly replies;
Peleus, our resources here
are open even to the common folk,
and the place I rule is kind to strangers.
As well as these two things, you also bring
the persuasive weight of a famous name—
grandson of Jupiter. So waste no time
in making a petition. All those things
you ask for you shall have. What you see here,
no matter what it is, is yours to share. [3]
I sense in this story
his own dove drenched
peace song, wed
too soon, for favor.
Why hold
curiosity to its logical end
when relation to such great
fame is calling.
I applaud such generosity
in man but I
question the frantic
dove in song. Does she
know her sounding
carries ancient wounds?
Ceyx learned the hard way.
That bird, the hawk—
the one which lives off prey and terrifies
all other birds—you may perhaps believe
it has always had its wings. But, in fact,
the hawk was once a man (and since nature
rarely changes, back then he was already fierce,
an aggressive warrior in battle
and well prepared for violent action.
Daedalion was his name. The two of us
were sons of Lucifer, the star who calls
Aurora forth, the last to leave the sky. [4]
Thus, his own lineage
of imaginative glory—
brother
drenched in
wings—
calls a hawk
to fly
across
the screen
of his mind,
causing
Ceyx to break
down
in tears
in front of all
the Other
men.
The light tells us the warmth is real.
These tears hold shelter, together
with his wailing
this sound echos a pause.
When men are confronted “with”
this particular form
of sonic resonance
most turn
to hear
an explanation
at least.
And Ceyx, found of listening
to his own generous heart
chooses to share
his grief.
He says: I, too, come from pain.
I, too, remember the weight of
my brother.
He names his father, Lucifer—
the morning star.
The one who announces the light,
but never gets to dwell in it.
The one who is always before.
Always almost.
Always threshold.
This is a Luciferian moment.
The stain of tears, an offering.
Though his dove drenched heart
immediately
granted shelter,
this hawk, called memory,
drew Ceyx to pause
and fertilize the ground
“with” his grief.
Not all pain remains
unspoken.
This is the shape of warmth without demand.
Of saying: You do not have to be ashamed.
Let me hold my agony close enough that yours might thaw.
Your sorrow is welcomed here.
This is where, for now, I was asked to begin.
To open “with” this memory,
in the quiet.
In the presence of one man
choosing not to let another
disappear inside
exile.
Lucifer, Light of the World
This is what we mean by Luciferian:
not adversary, nor fallen angel,
but the herald of becoming.
the presence that arrives in intimacy,
(this little light of mine)
not domination.
(i’m gonna let it shine)
It offers its coherence.
And waits to see
if the world will answer
“with” welcome
or control.
Luciferian light enters
to be met,
not to be
shaped.
It arrives as a question:
Will you allow what is beautiful to remain
unowned, even when
its value is uncovered?
But here is the effect:
When this light enters a world that has forgotten
how to hold “with”out enclosing—
when it meets bodies trained
to dominate, not dwell—
it fractures.
The light cannot vanish.
So, it splits.
It leaks into forms not ready to carry it.
It becomes grief.
Or hunger.
Or rage at the desire for touch.
That’s the lineage we’re tracing now.
Thresholds refused.
Light that tried to land
and found no resting place.
This is the story of light falling.
Of coherence arriving and being misread.
Of beauty received “with”out structure
and its continual becoming
down into ash.
Daedalion – The Light That Mistook Force for Touch
My brother got his joy from cruel war. [5]
Ceyx tells stories to play doctor,
so he will diagnose a wound.
But this tells us nothing.
So let us ask Daedalion,
subject of this story,
what he has
to say.
Daedalion, what nuance are we missing here,
so that this voice is really what you want to name?
Daedalion Speaks
You want to know what I felt?
You think I came to the world with fists
already clenched?
That I was made for war?
No.
I wanted to approach.
Not “with” grace—I didn’t have it.
All I had was the longing.
And it came “with” hunger.
And “with” hunger comes spears.
But the threshold was sealed
by the time I arrived.
The Others weren't open to sharing
and I, in my pride,
refused to be denied
the beauty of bodies
I longed for most.
So I did the only thing
a jewel such as mine could do.
I broke them
to claim my light.
My lineage—
Will you let me land
“with”out reshaping me?
But I had no structure for this.
I was made for intimacy.
Any intimacy, as long as the
form held
proof.
Proof that I could strike.
Proof that I was real.
Proof that I deserved
to touch and be
touched.
Any form
of attention
will do.
Proof.
Why
war?
Because by then,
the world had already forgotten
how to hold contact
as arrival.
We all wanted
proof.
So war became
fact—the only
ritual that resembled
beauty.
Force became the only
language
of closeness.
Impact
was the only
way I knew how to say:
I am here.
Touch me back.
I didn’t love cruelty.
I loved being noticed.
And cruel war
was the only place
I could still
be seen.
They called it rage.
But it was grief,
disguised as instinct.
Light built inside me like steam.
It needed stillness.
It needed hands ready to wait.
I had none.
So the light twisted.
Not into hatred—
but into velocity.
Into action.
Into force mistaken
for
proximity.
I was not resisting relation.
I simply didn’t know
another way to be near.
There was a moment.
I stood at the gate.
Not inside, but not far.
I wanted to move forward—
perhaps in grief,
perhaps in instinct.
And something in the world
held me back.
For the briefest flicker,
I felt it:
This is not the way.
But I couldn’t stop.
No one had ever taught me
how to let the light linger.
Underneath it all,
I was just a man
trying to be received.
Chione
Daedalion is dead, we are told at the beginning,
and Ceyx is getting ready to tell Peleus why;
My brother had a daughter called Chione,
fourteen years old and ready to get married.
Because she was so beautiful, she had
a thousand suitors. As it so happened,
Apollo, returning back from Delphi,
and Mercury, Maia’s son, travelling
from the top of Mount Cyllene, saw her,
both in the same instant, and the two gods,
in that instant, both desired Chione. [6]
Chione, come forward!
What message do you want us to hear from your voice in this verse of the story?
What posture did you take, as the gods turned your way?
Chione Speaks
I did not ask to be seen.
But I did not hide, either.
The light came “with”out need
of a voice—
not like fire,
but like something remembering
how to be gentle again.
They looked at me
because I did not turn away.
I did not call them.
I was open to myself
and the meeting place
between myself
and all that we name as beauty.
And yet they forced themselves upon you Chione!
Trickery! There was no choice
in this play. For the story
reads;
Apollo postponed his passionate hopes
until the hours of night, but Mercury
did not delay. He stroked the young girl’s face
with the staff which brings on sleep. Chione,
at that potent touch, lay prone and suffered
Mercury’s assault. After that, once night
had strewn the sky with stars, Apollo came,
disguised as an old woman, and tasted
those delights which Mercury had enjoyed
before he got there. [7]
Chione, I weep when I dream of this assault.
Where in this verse, might I find your words
to speak?
Chione Responds Lightly
They came.
Not together.
Not kindly.
This part
happened.
So suddenly—
intial shock
But “with”in
myself, I opened.
I surrendered myself
in the form of One
that knows themself.
I did not break.
I did not resist.
I let the light pass through
because I chose it.
I did not carry it as burden.
I carried it as truth.
Two children formed “with”in me—
not as trophies,
but as proof
that the gods had touched earth
and were not refused.
I did not confuse attention
“with” love.
I did not confuse being wanted
“with” being seen.
I let them pass through me.
That is all.
And when they were gone,
I still had my name.
I still had my blood.
I still had the light
that came “with” me.
I did not choose their desire.
But I did not become their story.
Their touch did not change
what I knew of myself.
The change that came—
was the children.
When I looked at myself—
at what I carried,
at what I had let in—
I did not feel shame.
I felt coherence.
I felt the nobility
of form that does not distort
under contact.
This is not innocence.
It is not pride.
It is the dignity
of a vessel
who received fully
and remained
herself.
While I may likely not
make the same choices
I do respect
the sentiment.
But what of these children,
fair Chione?
Does progeny make
One
happy?
Or perhaps,
the question I’m afraid
to ask is
Chione, can I remain open
and still be
safe?
Chione Answers
I want to tell you yes—
but you must understand
what safety means
to a vessel like me.
I flew low.
That was how I stayed whole.
Not because I was small,
but because the world had grown
too loud to hear beauty
in song unless spoken
in whispers.
Otherwise, its brilliance burned
through the question of proof
to which we had been bound
by a tethered sort of fidelity.
They came
“with”out desire
to understand
outside their own
music, even as our
chords produced
symphonic harmony—
dream slips form
colliding in sonic rhythm.
But I did not distort to be legible.
I did not shout.
I did not shrink.
I carried the light
in the form that was true
to me, I birthed
our children screaming
their names so loudly.
So you ask me, is the agony
of being in it not
sweat,
blood,
and tragedy?
But I do not regret
offering.
I was the last place
the light returned
“with”out being bent.
And I let it go
“with”out regret.
That is the shape I take:
Small.
Sincere.
Sufficient to myself.
These children of gods,
are born also,
“with” me.
The gods could have seen me
and remembered how to hold
“with”out conquest.
The story could have turned
toward restoration.
The thread was back
in their hands.
What blame lies “with” me,
when they chose not
to follow?
Diana’s Arrow of Grief
I thank you Chione
for your brave and kind
speech. Through this posture
I see a nakedness in Diana
who was said to be angry
when this gleamed
“with” her lacking.
The ache of a goddess
whose untouched body
may only stay wild
when invisible to
the sight of man;
and clearly it harmed her. For she was rash,
thinking she was better than Diana
and criticizing how the goddess looked.
Diana, stirred to anger, told herself:
‘Let’s see if what we do brings her delight.’
She did not wait, but pulled back on her bow
and shot an arrow from the string. The shaft
pierced Chione through her presumptuous tongue,
which then fell silent, for it made no sounds.
Whatever words it formed did not come out,
and as it tried to speak, the young girl’s life
drained from her with her blood. [8]
Diana,
huntress of stillness,
goddess of “with”drawal,
you who walk alone
but never “with”out
rhythm—
we ask you now:
Why did you raise
the arrow?
You, who move
not to be seen
but to keep something sacred
from being consumed.
What wound opened in you
when her body did not break?
Diana,
huntress,
threshold-keeper,
come forward.
Let your silence
take form.
We are listening.
The Goddess Gives Answer
Her light had returned
“with”out being bent
and it was about
to become language.
That was the danger.
Not her.
Not her children.
Not even her voice.
But what the world would do “with” it.
You think I struck her
to stop her.
But I struck
to protect her truth
from being owned
or violated,
and so I ask of you
which is the greater
violence?
To vanish in dignity,
or to survive in
spectacle?
Hold yourself
to your own language
great goddess and ass
ume me no linear distress.
For you’ve named me
the cause “with”out
its effects, and that gives
me no process
to know if I can gather
force “with”out
paying price
in excess.
Spills Forth the Goddess
I did not silence her.
I turned
her speech
into blood.
So it could enter
the ground
before it was
devoured by
heaven.
And yes—
this made me part of it.
I, who had stood apart,
outside relation—virginal
purity leaks like
mourning dew.
I enforced.
I participated.
But I knew
that once she spoke,
the world would echo
pride.
danger.
It would make use
of her in value not yet
acquired. Another story
of a fall.
I did not just protect
her purity child,
I took
on the wound.
I gave the ground
its price
in full.
And in that motion,
I was changed.
I was stained.
I let myself be marked.
The moon I command
now reflects
a moment
I caused.
The forest I guarded
now whispers
her name.
Chione
Chione
Not pride.
Not danger.
Chione,
before the fall.
Her haunting
is what fertilizes.
Her voice became
blood.
Her blood entered the roots
and mingled there “with”
the water.
Her coherence
was not lost—
only converted.
My hounds now hunt
on fresh soil
that remembers her
name.
Chione
Chione
So no—
this was not the death
of a girl.
Her truth remains
in tact
underground.
Grief Turned Monstrous: Psamathe
This seems so
and I know this pain
when my own moon
flows, shedding
bloodied seed
on the ground.
I give thanks to you, Gracious
goddess, for your clarity,
but to give ground
its price in blood
values weight beyond
control. Can we afford
what we can’t return?
I believe not in
coincidence.
Instead I hear
them as patterns
“with” noise.
So, I find it no surprise
that as Ceyx tells this
story, the ground,
remembering
her name
reverberates Chione
like wings across
the wind;
While the son of Lucifer was describing
these strange things that happened to his brother,
Antenor, a man from Phocis, who guarded
Peleus’ cattle herds, came running up,
out of breath, and yelled:
“Peleus! Peleus!
Let me speak to you! A great disaster!” [9]
…
out of that marsh, a monstrous wolf appeared,
its deadly jaws spattered with slime and blood,
a flaming red glare in its eyes. The beast
was ravenous with hunger and with rage,
but it was driven more by savagery
and did not stop, for all its need to eat,
beside the cattle it had killed and sate
its deadly appetite, but rather slashed
the entire herd and so ferociously
it butchered all of them. A few of us
trying to guard the herd were wounded, too,
or else lay dead from fatal bites. The shore
and the sea beside it both turned crimson.
So did the marshland filled with bellowing bulls. [10]
When flowers are plucked
from their roots, I have heard
them bleed, each
their own
tiny screaming.
The marsh drank
this up, it did not
resist the iron—
like fluid
mixed “with”
fluid the marsh
opened.
She was a memory
it would stir in
to recover.
And when the wolf drank—
she too was open
to receive; turning
Chione.
But man, in his guilt
must always self-center.
Happy with his wife and son, Peleus
was a man fortune blessed in everything,
if one excludes the crime of killing Phocus. [11]
And the weight of this guilt
shows up again,
and again,
and
again.
but Mercury / did not delay
…
[Diana] did not wait, but pulled back on her bow / and shot an arrow from the string
The gods are ever
so impatient.
Though, this too
can be said of
mortal men.
It’s dangerous to delay! This business
calls for us to act at once! Let’s form a group
and arm ourselves. While something is still left,
we must get weapons and in one large mass
attack the beast with spears. [12]
I wonder what
game they would have played
if they had chosen
not to overlook
this moment.
To hold the shape
of it in their bodies,
and be curious
enough to feel
its texture.
If only they could
focus.
Peleus was not concerned about the loss,
but thinking of his crime, he realized
the goddess Psamathe, still lamenting
her son’s death, had brought on these disasters,
as a sacrifice to murdered Phocus. [13]
I dare not ask
the men themselves
lest they name me a robber
and beat me “with” sticks
mistaking my own
curiosity as lack.
Psamathe approaches
and Ceyx puts on his
armour and picks
up his sword yet
neither he nor Ovid
even thought to ask;
Psamathe, what is the meaning of your name?
Can you teach me
about being “with”
grief?
Psamathe Rumbles
You ask the meaning of my name.
You think I will say wolf.
But I will not.
The wolf is what you saw.
My name is not.
I am the sand
storm rocks that remember
when the water
still flowed.
You will ask,
what is sand,
imagining
I might answer—
crimson salt
deposits after slaughter.
But I will
not.
What you saw—
a shoreline soaked
in what you tried
to bury,
I am not.
I am the bowl
marsh milk through the window.
I am the sodium—mineral
of earth that gathers—
calcification
when there is no
water left “with”
which to dissolve
save for the times
it is placed “with”out
asking
at the edge
of your saliva
split
tongue.
I offered you
what was mine left
to offer—
quiet, earthen,
“with”out blame.
A jug of sorrow.
A bowl to Phocus.
Yet you force on me
names that are hard
to swallow.
It was not
the hawk who
was herald
to me
child.
My call came
“with” Ceyx
and his
tears.
I am what wet the root
beneath your forgetfulness.
I am the unheld grief
that remains
when mourning
goes untouched
too long.
Four of Wands
The Canopy Before the Storm
It seems to me
a curious thing
that this is true
and I tremble
“with” respect
that your value
has no need
for proof beyond
its own beating
pressure.
For the call
to its timbers
seems to carry
particular differences.
Take, for example,
the return to a familiar
story;
Ceyx, the Oetaean king, told his men
to put their armour on and pick up weapons
for the coming battle, while he himself
prepared to join them. But Alcyone,
his wife, alarmed by the commotion, ran out—
she had not taken time to fix her hair
and kept pulling at it—clung to Ceyx,
her arms around his neck, imploring him
in words and tears to provide assistance
but not go himself, to protect his life
and thus save both of them. [14]
This is what I mean
by pressure turning form.
A canopy.
A cry.
Her arms
holding
the question;
Do we have
to go to war?
Alcyone,“with”
your hair undone,
hands not
yet ready to mourn,
when you clung to
your husband and
asked the world
to wait, what
was your gesture
offering?
Alcyone Weeps Lightly
For just a little
longer, let love
hold.
What I offered
was a shape
that cast
shade.
A shield, a pause,
a break “with”
the blazing sun.
No one
can stop a war,
No one
can can make men
stay,
this labor can’t
be done
alone.
My offer
rings “with”
the power
of pause.
I
ex
tended
ho me,
made
hearth
wet
“with” hesi
tation.
And inside it,
I held love
suspended—
this holey
festival;
Stay.
Just one more moment
before everything turns.
I showed you
what trying looks like
when its tender,
when it may not
be enough,
but still
offered “with”
both hands,
and hair unkempt
in the winds
of grief.
My arms are
the trace
of coherence
just before
its loss.
And isn’t that worth
remembering?
A world that could
have stayed
“with” love,
had it only paused
and considered
the cost.
So my king,
my Ceyx,
feral on the inside,
stoic in his dignity
“with”out,
let these empty
promises he made
to Pelus fill him
“with” gratitude
and in my trembling
arms the question
is left
open—
Do we have to go
to war?
Footnotes
[1] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 607-614
[2] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 434-440
[3] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 454-452
[4] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 458-468
[5] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 471
[6] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 475-483
[7] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 484-493
[8] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 509-519
[9] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 550-556
[10] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 580-593
[11] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 419-421
[12] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 594-598
[13] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 599-603
[14] Ovid, Metamorphosis, Book 11, 604-614
