Generally, equinox refers to the poise of a dependent figure (Earth), inclined neither away from nor toward the sun. So–equinox is the short-term experience of a figure that is in usual relation to the sun (being held in correlation by the sun) becoming its own temporary primary—becoming abandoned, becoming the painful solitudes of a thing forced into the position/ poise wherein it has to be its own light.

Jill Stengel writes deeply of the losses and lonelinesses of the solitudes of such equinox realities in the Dusie chap dear equinox. This book is an unintentional prothalamion (“I am out here raw as the/ night sky waiting for you”)–a pouring song to a not yet found future beloved. This sweet little book is an agonizing, loving pitch that emerges by way of calling out to the night (“dear night […] filled with longing and seek”).

Calling out to the night as a figure to relate to, pulls the sun toward us (“the sun always comes”), which is the power of a “passive chalice [being] ruptured.” I think of the sore nights in the cave where the tears were countless and no matter what I did the night seemed to thicken. It may seem dramatic, but moving from the hermetics of the cave into nomadisms with bare feet (until the feet bleed) in the darkest hours is worth—is something more romantic and vigilant than time merely passing in an awaiting bucolic zone (“there are tears there is ache there is such desire”). It is a way to promise presence to the not yet seen or not yet seeable (“and if the match is wet with tears I will find my own light”).

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