You were born to make beauty in the slaughterhouse of the world. You were born to toil. You were born to love. Offer yourself up to the light of the golden eye of the sun, to the silver mouth of the moon, to the gods and goddesses of love. The god and goddess reside within, but do not forget them in others. Gather your passions like precious gems, polish and refine them and give them to the world. Loss is inevitable, but do not fear it. It is the corpse without its stomach, intestines, lungs, and liver. But these organs wait in canopic jars to be reclaimed in the afterlife. Only the heart remains. It is the hope that allows light and love to flood and enter the void. Live with hope, with imagination and purpose.

When someone dies, it is said the dead are still with you. It is never enough. But it is true, too. And Aurora knew then that Cyrus, imperfect as he had been, was still all around her. They had come from the same womb, and later they had shared the womb-home they had made together. A part of him was in the dog that had run to her. In the music. In the betrayal of Nephy’s child. In Aurora and Ever’s child. In the sky now, full of clouds, with one smear of rainbow light—yellow, green, blue, purple, violet—a fire rainbow, just above her head.

She had not been able to attend Cyrus’s funeral, but she would honor him here and now.

I have been imperfect, Aurora thought. I have been lustful and full of fear. I have been ignorant. I have neglected the earth, I have neglected my beloved, and I have neglected myself. I have forgotten to kiss the dough and honey from my loved one’s fingers, kiss his lips and hair in the blue dawn. I have listened to death singing in the courtyard and longed to go to him, lusted for him like a lover.

I played the role of Isis, betrayed by my brothers. Betrayed by my sister. Gathering up the parts of my beloved and calling him back to me. But I am not Isis. I am far less sacred than the missing-and-the-dead found along the roadsides and in the mine shafts. The raped, the murdered, the mutilated and dismembered. The unclaimed Johns, the Janes, the Baby Does. I am less sacred, but like them, like everyone, I embody the sacred in me, too.

See me, I am imperfect, but trying, as we all must try, to bring light to the darkness, bring back water to the desert, carry the lotus of love in our hands.

I am Aurora now.

And everything lost someday returns.