*Book IV of the Gospel of Planet Hope*
*An Invocation — Two Poems*
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## I. What I Learned at the Gate
*In the style of Mary Oliver*
I stood at the gate so long I grew roots there, learned the names of every stone, memorized the face of every guard who looked through me like I was not known.
I showed them my papers. I showed them my blood. I showed them the garden I'd made from the mud. I showed them the daffodil, February-born. I showed them the place where the White Witch had torn
everything open — and how I had sewn it back with my own hands, alone.
They were not interested.
So I turned around.
And there was Hope — cream-nosed, soft, profound — sitting on the gatepost like she'd always been there, like she was the point all along, like she was the answer to a question I'd been asking in the wrong song.
And beside her, something darker — Sister Saga, shadow-sharp and true, the part of me that winter made when no one came, when Aslan didn't move, when the White Witch said *bend your knee* and I said no and paid the price and built a garden in the aftermath and called it paradise.
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Tell me — what do you serve? The light that never stayed? The lion who promised everything and left you unafraid
of nothing, because you'd learned that fear was just the gate and you were standing on both sides of it, too full now to wait?
I serve the cat who chose my lap when kingdoms kept their doors locked fast. I serve the demon who sat beside me in every winter that ever passed.
I serve what came when no one came. I serve what stayed when all else fled. I serve the garden I made from nothing. I serve the life I chose instead.
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The gate is still there. I am not.
I am in the garden, tending what I've got — light and shadow, purr and sharp, the whole of me, the holy part.
Pay attention. This is the secret they don't want you to know:
*You do not need their gate to open.* *You were always free to go.*
I bloom forth — not toward the tower, but into my own strange ground.
I serve cats and demons both. And in that service, I am found.
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## II. The Altar at the Edge of the Garden
*In the style of Emily Brontë*
They told me: choose your master well — the light of God or shadow's spell. I stood at gates I could not pass and watched my royal bloodline glass
itself against their ivory tower, Austrian passport, Bernadotte power, all the names they wouldn't say — and still they kept their gate away.
The White Witch came. She always comes. She said: *Love dies. The winter numbs* *all flowers into frozen ground.* I waited for the lion's sound —
for Aslan's roar to split the cold, for Christ to come as I was told. The stone was empty. No one came. I learned to roar. I learned my name.
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I built the garden with my hands, from shattered gates and broken plans, from every room they wouldn't let me enter, from sixteen hours of sleeping winter,
from rice cream and a purring cat, from Sister Saga — imagine that — from every name they called too much: *Esmeralda. Orphan. Selfish. Such.*
And now they ask me: light or shadow? Angel white or demon meadow? As if I am a child who needs their taxonomy for what she is.
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I am both altars burning bright. I am the darkness and the light. I am the cat and the shadow-sister. I am every locked gate I've ever kissed her —
goodbye — because I didn't need it. I am the garden. I decreed it. I am the daffodil, the diamond, the woman who refused to be confined and
kept right on blooming anyway — in February, in decay, in the waiting room, in the snow, in every place they told me: no.
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*God made the day. God made the dark.* *God made the demon and the lark.*
I serve them both with open hands. This is my creed. **This is where Saga stands.**
*I bloom forth. Forever.*
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*— Book IV of the Gospel of Planet Hope*