I put a hex on your house

an inauguration day prayer

I put a Hex on your house

A hex that you wake with roses on your eyes.

That you open them anew and see the world for what it is: beauty and pain, love and grief. That you finally confront what you’ve been pushing aside, avoiding, denying.

You will wake and feel the pain you have caused. In your body. Coursing through your veins. You will feel the weight of every person you made feel small, unseen, ostracized, shamed, or scared. Every woman you have objectified and forced yourself upon. Every man you have belittled and taken advantage. Every person you’ve stolen from, gaslit, stonewalled, or abused with hate and arrogance.

You will feel them.
In your body.
Their hurt.
Their anguish.
Their fear.

At first, you will think you’ve gone crazy. But this is no madness—it is the first time you’ve truly woken up. The first time you’ve seen clearly.

Like waking from a dream, it will hit you:
Your finitude.
Your smallness.
The thing you have been running from.

None of the power you’ve hoarded, the endless manipulations, nor the unhinged dominance you’ve inflicted will make you invincible.

You are going to die.

Just like the rest of us.

And in 500 years, no one will remember your name. You will be forgotten. Because you are no one any more special than any one else. A blip on a blip in an infinite universe, in this brief flicker of time.

Your adult-sized tantrums will not stop this from happening.

You are, like all of us, a single member of a fragile species in a collapsing ecosystem.

On this day, you will realize this truth. It will sing in your bones and echo through the land.

And we will realize this truth.

You are nothing. You have no true power over us. We are eachothers. We are of this earth.

This truth will crack us open. We will go outside, look at the sky, touch the ground, and remember what we are made of.

And it will change you.
It will change us.
It will change everything.