300(ish) Words on Being a Leo Out of the Limelight
“Your sun is in Leo. You are bound to be the centre of attention. You are destined to be a star.” Astrology is as real as the home you live in. Three of my placements are in Leo, and they are all supposed to govern the bedazzled life I should be living. All my placements translate to a life on maple wood flooring, being bejewelled with diamonds individually. People work for me because they want to; I am the centre of everything, I am gravity. I am a Leo and my sun is a Leo, both of those translate to fire. I am fire personified, but my town has always been sand. Dry, treacherous. My mother knew when she was going to have me. She’s always been an It Girl. She moved to a small town because she knew when I’d be born. A mother always knows. She never wanted me to be me.
She cursed me for this. You get to be beautiful, but you never get to be seen. All the months for my peak are summer. Sweating and panting. God made me perfect. Satin on a cushion, but the cushion is fifteen mattresses up. I will always feel the pea on the bed, no matter how far down it is. I will never be comfortable on this Earth, something will always poke out. Leo, the sun itself was built of fire, the sun is made of rubies and sapphire inside a kiln by children. I am me. Made and devoured.
God decided to sit down with me and make me perfect, and I don’t even sweat and I’m the most gorgeous thing alive. I’m racing through things. My sun should be on fire, should colour me warm, but I have been inside my house all this time. No light gets in where you can’t get out of. The mystery isn’t that I’m on a throne, it’s that the crown that was supposed to be made for me is too heavy. My Leo is a sun without ever being in the sun.
Okay, that’s fine. You live here for eighteen years, and then you get out and you do all that you were destined to. Dresses embroidered with gold, veils that go so long we could be housed in it. It’s fine, you can do this. No one tells you that if you spend eighteen years in the dark, you never come out of it. Your eyes never adjust to the brightness. You will always be too pale. Glamour has forsaken you. You can forfeit your destiny if your mother wills it. You can hide from what you were meant to be till it passes you by. Once it has passed you by, you will never be famous. You will never be glamorous.
You were meant to be loved by the masses, and now you just end up being loved by you. Sad and pathetic and funny. You’re so screwed up, but you’re still loved. So loved it hurts to be.
Ziqr Peehu is a POC writer that lives on the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and mental health (or lack thereof). They write obsessively, a factor which reflects in their writing.
