Page 27 of Love Letters from a Libra
“You’re not a mind reader. Stop assigning meaning,” I muttered to myself, tossing my phone onto the cushion beside me. Instead, I cleaned the hell out of my bathroom. By noon, I was convinced it was my fault.
I grabbed my journal from the coffee table and flipped to a fresh page. I held the pen for a moment before I started writing.
Why do I always feel the shift before it happens? That subtle change in energy when someone pulls away. Is it my imagination? Am I manifesting what I fear? Or am I just too tuned in to the frequencies people emit when they’re about to ghost?
The words stared back at me, too raw and honest. I slammed the journal shut without finishing the thought. Instead, I grabbed my phone again and opened Facepage. It was better to channel this energy into something less direct. I scrolled through my saved memes until I found the perfect one, a stylized image with text that read:When they switch up their energy but expect you to maintain your orbit.
I posted it with a cryptic caption:Some planets pull back before they come closer. The question is: do you wait for the return or create your own gravity? #cosmicthoughts #mercurialmoods
It was vague enough that no one would know it was about my situation specifically, but clear enough that my followers would flood the comments with:
“This hit hard.”
“I felt this,” and all the other digital validations that briefly filled the hollowness but never quite reached the center of it.
I set my phone face down on the table and stood up, a restless energy coursing through me. I selected a stick of myrrh incense from the basket beside it, struck a match, and watched the flame burn before touching it to the tip. The familiar ritual soothed me as the first tendrils of fragrant smoke curled toward the ceiling.
“Cleanse this space and my thoughts,” I whispered, more habit than conscious prayer.
The smoke followed me as I moved to my bookshelves, scanning the disorganization. Books were stacked horizontally on top of vertical rows, spines facing every direction. It looked like madness, and it was messing with me.
I needed to rearrange. To control something when everything else was slipping through my fingers. I pulled books from the shelves, creating piles on the floor. Astrology, romance, self-help, and a psychology pile formed a tower that threatened to topple. The physical labor of it grounded me and gave my hands something to do while my mind continued its spiral.
As I reached for a book on the top shelf, my necklace swung forward, a simple silver key on a delicate chain. It wasn’t a decorative key but an actual key, my first one.
The memory hit me with clarity: I came home from school to an empty apartment, key clutched in my small hand. I must have been ten or eleven years old. Just old enough to be trusted withletting myself in, yet not old enough to understand why neither parent could be there to meet me.
I’d slide the key into the lock, and the empty apartment would greet me with silence, no adult to ask about my day. Then I’d make myself a snack, usually apple slices or peanut butter and crackers, if we had them. I’d sit at the kitchen table with my homework spread out.
Responsible little Zanaa. Taking care of business. Sometimes I called my grandma to hear her voice, but mostly I’d sit in silence, learning how to keep myself company.
The fighting started not long after the key. With voices that thought I couldn’t hear through walls that were too thin.
“You’re never here. She needs a father who shows up, not just sends money,”Mom would say with her voice tight.
“I’m building something for us. What good is being present if we can’t keep the lights on?”Dad would counter with his usual, smooth, jazz voice.
They never asked what I needed, but what I wanted was simple. I wanted my parents to be together and happy, but children didn’t get votes on adult decisions, so I learned to adapt, expect less, and need less.
The divorce papers came in the summer. In turn, Toni came over after school when her mom, my Aunt Camille, worked late. She’d help with homework, listen to me, tell stories about school, and braid my hair with genuine interest.
“You’re an old soul. You have more wisdom in that pinky finger than most grown folks have in their whole body,”she’d tell me while braiding my hair.
What she really meant was that I was growing up too fast. I learned how to self-soothe before I should’ve needed to, but she gave me something precious. The sense that someone was showing up for me, someone who saw me even when I tried so hard to be invisible, to need nothing, and to be in no trouble.
I placed the last book on the newly organized shelf and stepped back to survey my work. The incense had burned down to a stub, its delicate ash left in the holder. The order on these bookshelves helped my apartment feel calmer now, or maybe I was projecting my emotional state onto inanimate objects again.
“That’s what I want, someone who shows up, not who fades away when things settle, someone who stays even when it’s quiet,” I whispered to the empty room, the truth settling in my bones.
Knocking at the door caused me to jump. Nobody ever came by unannounced, definitely not at 8:47 p.m. on a Wednesday. For a second, I considered ignoring it, pretending I wasn’t home or already asleep, but curiosity got the best of me, so I headed over to peer through the peephole. My heart did a little flutter that had no business in my chest after weeks of radio silence.
Jules.
I smoothed my hands over my hair, suddenly aware that I was wearing sweatpants with a coffee stain on the thigh and a faded OSU T-shirt that had seen better days. Not exactly the look I would have chosen for this particular plot twist, but fuck it. He was the one showing up unannounced. He got what he got.
I opened the door, and there he looked, simultaneously exhausted and put together. His locks were pulled back in a casual way that probably took zero effort but looked magazine-ready. He still wore work clothes: dark pants and a crisp button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to expose his forearms, which should’ve been illegal in at least seven states. But his eyes caught me as darker than usual, underlined by shadows that spoke of too many hours staring at screens.
“Hey,” he said like he hadn’t disappeared into one-word texts at first and then altogether for weeks, like he hadn’t had me cleaning and rearranging my entire home as an emotional displacement.
