Dear March Hares,
This is the month when winter begins to leave us, when we dive into love like sparkling fish into oceans or roast our desires over the fiery spits of our hearts. There is Neptune in Pisces and Mars in Aries and Pallas Athene in Sagittarius. These are momentary homecomings with bright and pulsing impact. We are changed by what comes again. We are dual now, as we are always, but there is hope too—something about spring, about rebirth. I am right here with you, coasting on the edge of surrender and it is not easy. It’s not supposed to be easy.
But it feels good, even the aching, And, as one Janis Joplin once sang, Feeling good’s good enough for me.
Thank you so much for coming to me, for reading these small love letters/offerings.
My Very Best,
Galactic Rabbit
P.S. Thank you for all the donations, no matter how small. They give me hope. I love you all.
Here is a link towards donations if you are so moved:
P.P.S. I would not be able to write these horoscopes without Claire Skinner, this is a fact.
Aquarius
Night walking together, I can feel your hand empty beside mine. I want to reach over and hold it but I don’t. Instead, I imagine the cups of your palms filled with the buzzing light of stars that dot the sky above us. I imagine you the keeper of uncountable small universes. I think you must be very powerful. You talk to me as we move together, you tell me beautiful things but you don’t speak about your heart.
In her poem “Waiting,” Allison Benis writes: When I hear her set her coffee back on the counter, I look at my napkin to pretend I’m occupied with my love of circles. This could be an aerial sketch of twirling ballerinas, I think – each dancer ignoring the small white pain in her ankle.
Aquarius, I can see the dancer in you, the pain moving in quiet elegant circles. When our hands are empty together, they are never empty of stars, and for this reason we often forget to touch. But if you wanted to come closer, if we placed our palms together, we could dance instead of walking. If you trusted your own softness, it would not let you down.
Pisces
I can’t give you what you want although I try. I visit you beneath the big tree and bring you small gifts: plums, amethysts. They please you but they’re not enough. When I am away from, you do not write and I miss you. The universe sends me missives, a piece of glass reflecting your wet face, sequence from a dress you loved left scattered in the dirt.
Water-animal, you’re not so weak. I have seen you flood a room with love, a river not gentle. When you ask me to care for you, you do not mean as I would care for a small child or an exhausted lover. You mean that I might reach into dark water and cup the moon reflected there. You mean that I might cup the moon. But, Pisces, it’s only a reflection, a piece of light, a fragment in the eye.
You ask for the impossible because you won’t let yourself be cared for. I hold you in my hands, and then you’re gone.
Aries
Imagine we are in a dim room, my kitchen. I give you my Tarot deck and, as you shuffle, I boil water and pour you a cup of tea. When the cards unfold, they are too close, first the eight of wands, then the seven. I sit across from you and watch you try to make sense of it. I can feel you imagine the eight of wands: clear communicator and creator, successful in your ventures. And then the seven: defensive, trying—often with difficulty—to balance your footing, your ideas, your goals. Which one are you?
Both, I think, as I cut you a piece of cake and add hot water to your cup. On your best days, when you can see yourself, you are exactly the creator you have always wanted to be. The days open up like treasure chests around you, treasure you have dived tirelessly for, going down again and again so that you might find the rewards you seek. On your worst days, there is a part of you that cannot see beyond what’s missing, and you spend your hours wondering whether all your work is worth it. You forget how to trust the world around you because you can’t remember how to trust yourself.
Put the cards back in the deck, Aries, you are the only one who decides which life you want to live.
Taurus
There are those of us who always expected we’d become adults. We spent our childhoods taking care, not only of ourselves, but also of our parents. We often did this quietly, simply denying ourselves what we wanted or imagining we were never meant to have those things at all. When sadness rose up in the throats of our loved ones like driftwood, we quieted it away.
Now, walking along the path of our grown-up solitude, it’s hard to ignore the houses we’ve built with all that sadness—small structures made of twig and twisted wood no one could live in, not even us.
My beautiful bull, I hope that one day you look back at yourself at this moment and see someone newly learning how to be young again—young in the heart and in the spirit. It’s not your job to maintain what never belonged to you so, whatever sadness you’ve inherited from the world around you, let the world hold it while you practice being free.
Gemini
There’s no getting bored with you, Twin-star. If there’s music playing then you are the one playing it, or dancing to it, or raising your friends up out of their seats so that they might dance with you. In the gauzy fog of the beauty you offer up, it’s hard to see what’s missing, what you hide away.
Perhaps you forget yourself too. Perhaps, under hundreds of tiny disco lights or innumerable unfinished projects you convince yourself that being busy is enough.
Life shouldn’t be a collection of beginnings without ends and destinies you dreamed up for some future girl you convinced yourself you haven’t got the time to be. Gemini, what if all the other dance floors melted away and the only one left was the one you wanted to base your life on? What songs would you let define you? Who would you invite to dance? How dark would you let it get?
Cancer
Did you know that in the Tarot, The Chariot is most closely associated with Cancer? I must admit that my knowledge of astrology comes in waves, intuitive understanding layered by study and obsession. For a long time, I couldn’t quite place the word control, why it came up so often when I thought of you. The Chariot opened something up for me.
Plato once described The Chariot as an allegory for the human soul. The charioteer drives two horses, one noble and one ignoble, toward his destination. The driving is troublesome yet the journey is necessary—toward truth.
I don’t believe in noble or ignoble. There is wisdom to be found in darkness and in light, neither one is inherently good or bad. I want you to remember this as you desperately try to pull the reins tightly on the dark horse. You must honor the chaos in you; it is just as much your guide.
Leo
Remember when your hair was long and thick with secret patches of color? I listened to you sing sad songs on old Brooklyn rooftops and I cried into the concrete, I was so in love with your big love. Then you cut it all off. You were bright blonde and brave, you fell for a mean woman who told you what to eat and how to speak. You let her. Later you moved across the country, grew your hair out the color of buckwheat honey. A sweet-hearted boy held space in your heart and you knew all along he wasn’t the one.
Lioness, my photos of you are an archive of who you were with each lover, each life you lived and left behind.
It’s not a bad way to be, not a bad way to move through this world of revelation and heartbreak, changing yourself a little bit each time. Even if you’re afraid to look deeply—even if there are days when the face you see in your reflection scares you. I think you are the best version of yourself now, the best you’ve ever been, getting better all the time.
Virgo
In “Once,” Mary Jo Bang writes: Once there was my life and it was a thing / Filled with difficulty but it was mine. Virgo, this is the part where I ask you the same question I’ve been asking you for years. Whose life is the one you’re living? Only, this time, I’m not looking for an answer. I’m not interested in your accomplishments, or all the things you’ve done to get this far. I know you know how to work hard, how to tie and cut off any visible loose ends.
I want to know if you’re tired, yet, of proving yourself to no one. Of waiting on all your good deeds to bring you just returns.
No one owes you anything, not their approval, not their understanding. And that’s a good thing. Love, it turns out, is not about equality. Not about who loves whom more, or most, or not enough. It’s about being strong enough to care for each other. It’s about learning how to truly care for yourself, in your most lonely hours—with no one watching.
Libra
You know everybody’s secrets. Not because you have one of those faces a person can trust, not because you’re always asking just the right questions. There’s just something about your steady gaze, your unflinching commitment to an honest moment. That’s how come I always wind up making out with you, or wanting to, or calling you up the moment I get to where you are. You’re easy to be around.
In my most selfish moments, I find you unquestionable. I marvel at your firm grip on what I drunkenly call reality. I praise your big dreams and your romantic nature. Who else would let me fuck them in plain sight under the apple blossoms of the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens like we are both Pablo Neruda? In the morning, sober, I find myself wondering who you really are and if, all these years, you’ve ever really let me know you.
I’m not saying you owe me your secrets. I just want you to know that if you ever want someone to hold a little space for what you need—all you have to do is ask.
Scorpio
It’s International Women’s Day and you don’t have enough money to buy your mother a bouquet. You call your best friend and, next thing you know, there’s 40 dollars in your Quick Pay account with a note: “flowers for mama.” It’s the end of a long week and you can barely get out of bed. A different friend tells you to be ready in twenty, you get dressed and she pulls up, takes you to breakfast. She asks all the right questions and doesn’t turn away when you begin to cry.
Listen, I know it’s been a hard year. I know you didn’t get what you wanted and you lost more than you ever thought you could live with losing. It’s going to be ok.
A long time ago, you told yourself you were on your own. You kept letting people in, sure. You are good at being the lover. It’s the being loved part you have trouble with. It’s hard to allow yourself to be vulnerable when it takes all the energy you have just to convince yourself you’re strong. Well, despite your best efforts, all around you are people who would love nothing more than to hold you up. You should let them because you need it.
Sagittarius
Let me tell you about Pallas-Athene, who you might know as Athena, goddess associated with creativity, logic, and war. It’s easy enough to find icons of her, Amazonian in stature, lesbian in their vibe. These icons don’t allow for a complex understanding of the goddess they depict. They leave out the woman who, in order to please Poseidon, stripped Athenian mothers of their citizenship, their vote, and their rights over their own children.
When she is in your house, Sagittarius, you must be careful how you treat the feminine energies in and around you.
I want to remind you that the divine feminine, however it manifests, is in each human and it is necessary. Like the moon is to the Sun. Like the way you hold the universe inside you. Honor the maker in you, the intuitive, and the healer. Honor your time and what you create with it. When you let others (or yourself) devalue the feminine in you, you are making yourself small for no one’s benefit.
Capricorn
Seagoat, ask me to get in your river and I will go down. That’s the weight you have, a looming shadow cast by a skeleton made of steel bones. As above, so below—I trust your magic. I would lie down on your altar and drink from your cup. Knowing this, you must not abuse your influence and or mistake other peoples’ weakness for your own power.
It’s not that you don’t know how to be alone; it’s just that you are stronger in the company of others. Be careful how you choose your company. Collective love, action and grief are a lot like sharing a home, not everyone is fit to live with everyone. Someone leaves the dishes in the sink too long, someone forgets to close the door and when you return everything is gone.
That is the cost of casting your net too wide, of holding too many up. You can’t account for everyone, you can’t always see who needs care most.