Willow bends where other trees break, and standing water forgets what moves through it. Set them together in glass and let them teach you the same softness.
This working does not bury sorrow in salt and root beneath the earth; it drowns the weight in still water and lets time do the dissolving. Paper softens, ink blooms and fades, and the sharp thing you wrote goes shapeless. By the dark of the moon, there is only water that remembers nothing.
The Working
- On the first night of the waning moon, write the weight you carry on a small square of paper, in as few words as will hold it.
- Fold the paper toward you, then set it in the bottom of a clear glass jar.
- Lay a single willow leaf over it, and cover both with clean water poured slowly from a bowl.
- Seal the jar and set it where it will not be moved, in a low and shadowed place.
- Each night of the waning moon, hold the jar to what little light there is and watch the words loosen and fade in the water.
- On the dark of the moon, when the ink has bled to nothing, pour the water out onto bare ground and let the leaf go with it.
- Rinse the jar in running water before you keep it for anything else.
The Incantation
Willow, bend and do not break;
water, hold and do not keep.
Let the letters loose their grip,
let the sharp words go to soft.
By the dark I pour you out,
forgotten and forgiven both.
The ground drinks the water and the leaf lies where it falls. What the glass held has no shape now, and neither does the ache that wrote it.