Baba Yaga The Wise

Come closer, little flame-carrier—
yes, you with the ash on your hands
and the question in your throat.

You think this is an ending.

You stand at the edge of a burned-down house—
job gone, lover vanished,
chapter closed with a sound like bone against bone—
and you call it ruin.

I call it kindling.

Do you not know me yet?

I am the old woman who lives
in the place where things end
so that other things may dare to begin.
I stir the pot with broken promises.
I season the stew with last words.
I hang old lives like herbs from the rafters
until they are dry enough
to be medicine.

Listen.

An ending is not a punishment—
it is a doorway that does not beg you to stay.

You may weep, yes.
I do not forbid it.
Tears are the river that loosens the soil.
Grief is the shovel that breaks the ground.
Rage is the thunder that cracks the sky open
so something wild may grow.

But do not build your house there
in the storm of what was.

Do not make a shrine
to the reasons it broke.

Those reasons—
sharp, bitter, necessary—
they brought you here,
but they are not the path forward.

The ending itself—
ah, that is the clean blade.
That is the breath after the scream.
That is the space
where your true name begins to echo again.

You ask me,
“Was it bad? Was it wrong? Was it failure?”

I laugh,
teeth like old moons.

Child—
it was transformation.

You are not meant to stay
in any single skin.

You molt.
You shed.
You bury versions of yourself
like seeds in the dark.

And if you are wise—
if you are very, very wise—
you will not curse the soil
for being cold and black.

You will press your palms into it
and whisper:

What am I becoming?

For there are blessings here,
though they do not arrive dressed in silk.

They come disguised—
as silence
as solitude
as the sudden absence of what once defined you.

And in that absence—
you will find the outline of yourself
uncluttered,
unclaimed,
unafraid.

This is where new work is born.
This is where new love circles back,
sniffing the air for a truer scent.
This is where meaning—
your meaning—
steps forward from the shadows
and says:

Now. We begin again.

Do not cling to the corpse of what has ended.
Honor it.
Burn it.
Learn from its bones.

Then step through the doorway
with soot on your face
and fire in your chest.

Because life—
oh, wild, relentless life—
is not a straight road.

It is a spiral of deaths and births,
a thousand quiet endings
giving way
to a thousand ferocious beginnings.

And you—
you are not lost.

You are simply
in the middle
of becoming.