Double Cazimi Conjunction of Venus and Mars

Twice the stars burned our names into the sky;
I am yours through every lifetime.

We escaped the underworld, which looked eerily like the Deep South. Between hot, humid summers and deep-fried food, we grew closer. Hades was all smiles—big hair, high-heeled hooves. We survived demons in oversized trucks, tires squealing, smoke curling from spinning wheels.

We emerged changed in all the ways that mattered, losing nothing and gaining one more cat. Like Persephone returning from the depths, we carried new light inside us, even after being swallowed.

A good woman can make a sweater from wool and two needles. A good man can bring home meat with only a knife. We are a good woman and a good man—a union that feels cosmic. I needed to follow absent-minded girls to learn that everything I wanted wasn’t waiting in the future but already here—right time, right light. You needed to descend into the dark abyss of your mind. We needed to be trapped in Alabama to discover that home had been within each other all along. We needed to be lost to find each other.

That day, we both looked up. Our eyes met. Hello, there. I know you. You know me. Oh my God—I had forgotten how good it felt to be known. I had been a stranger in a strange land. Now I see you were too.

We rediscovered each other in a winter without snow. You were in the cold sky, and I was at the bottom of the ocean. We had been pacing the same circles until we looked up and saw each other again. A fated alignment: for the second time in our lives, we fell in love. How rare. Rare like the double cazimi conjunction of Venus and Mars that happened this week. Me and you. Most people only get one.

A meeting of planets, a meeting of husband and wife. A house is built brick by brick, but a marriage is built day by day, meal by meal, laugh by laugh. We spend our days like a shopping spree—Taco Bell and the library—we feast like kings. Clink glasses with me. Cheers to a new year, a renewed us. We tussle and nip at each other’s ears like animals again. I smell your breath. We circle each other, tails in the air, moving toward an infinite future.

Twice the stars burned our names into the sky.

I seal this chapter of our lives with a kiss.
I wouldn't be me without you.