The lost witch and the girl who wrote her
She flew when I couldn’t. And maybe that’s why I invented her.
I don’t remember exactly when she came to me, but I know what summoned her.
A pair of silver earrings, shaped like a tiny witch on a broom. Hair swept by the wind, arms raised mid-flight. She looked… joyful. Not scary. Not wicked. Just... free. And I couldn’t stop looking at her.
So I gave her a name.
Possidonia.
And then I gave her a life.
She wasn’t the type of witch who was brewing curses or lurking in forests. She was clever and curious, a little sarcastic, and kind. She could talk to animals, I think. She had a best friend who lived in a tree trunk and offered strange advice that always turned out to be wise. She rode her broom not to escape, but to see things. She liked how small the town looked from up there.
Her world wasn’t mapped, it just spilled from me. Page after page. I remember the handwriting. I remember feeling like I was uncovering something, not inventing it. Like she already existed, and I just had to keep up.
There are only traces left now, little notes and mentions I found in my 1998 diary. I must’ve written dozens of chapters, but I don’t know where they went. They vanished like spells cast into the wind.
But I remember how it felt to write them.
I was a teenager in a tiny town, trying to make sense of things that didn’t fit inside the rules I was given. And Possidonia gave me a way out. Or maybe a way in. She let me believe in power that didn’t come from grades or obedience or being liked. She let me build a world that made more room: for feelings, for questions, for wonder.
She let me be wild in a place that rewarded quiet.
Sometimes I wonder what she’d tell me now, if she could land beside me with that same silver smile. Maybe she’d say, “You don’t need a broom anymore. You already know how to fly.”
Maybe she was never meant to stay.
Maybe she was just a spell I wrote when I needed one.
And maybe it worked.
🖤 SPELL FOR A GIRL WHO REMEMBERS
Say the name but not too loud Names can float or they can drown Say it soft, say it right Say it once, and hold the light Fly is just a kind of fall If you never leave at all Fly can mean to slip away Or to come back home and stay Light can burn or light can guide It can blind or it can hide You once said the stars don’t lie But witches sometimes do Home is not a door or key It’s the one who lets you be Say the name, and if she hears She may land beside your fears Say it once. Then let it go. If it’s meant, she’ll always know.
✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries—one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.
Next…
I thought the world ended when Brazil lost the World Cup
In 1998, we weren’t just watching the World Cup.
This is beautiful. I will listen to it again.
Many of us had a Possidonia once—some version of a wild, wise, quietly rebellious self we conjured when the world around us felt too small. The way you described her—curious, kind, flying not to escape but to see—felt like a mirror held to something I forgot I once carried.
The line “She let me be wild in a place that rewarded quiet” struck deep. That tension between containment and freedom… it lingers even now.
Thank you for sharing this spell. It reminded me that the parts of us we think are lost often just shift form. Maybe we don’t need the broom anymore. But it’s beautiful to remember we once did—and that we knew how to ride it.