Regresa a Mí (Nonfiction)

***

“Do you believe in magick?” asked my friend one afternoon, while studying in our university library. Having recently seen Anna Biller’s The Love Witch, my Instagram had transmogrified into somewhat of a public grimoire: a red candle with waxen words engraved, an assortment of tarot cards, and innumerable crystals appeared in the foreground of my latest posts. I nodded, understanding her question: magick with a “k.” The distinction was important. My friend knew better than to use the “correct” spelling, reserved for grand illusions, card tricks, and rabbits in hats, instead referring to the spiritual variation of the word popularized by famed occultist Aleister Crowley, who saw magick as a path to self-discovery and spiritual transformation.

“I do,” I answered my friend, who was on her own magickal journey. “You know, my mom practiced witchcraft in the 1970s. I have a bit of family history.”

My mother loosely followed Wicca in her teens and told me that my great-aunt on my grandfather’s side had practiced witchcraft, which surprised me, given her Syrian Jewish background. When my grandfather was alive, he wore a golden Hamsa, a hand-shaped amulet for protection, that my mother gave me after he passed away. Both he and my mother utilized evil eye talismans and carried special crystals to ward off negative energy, practices I found quirky as a child but adopted almost instinctively as I got older. Though these habits weren’t inherently magickal in the Crowley sense, their presence in my upbringing primed me for curiosity. I researched the connections between Judaism and magick, learning that there were many instances of the two commingling. Through my father’s Mexican heritage, I found my way to brujería, a form of spirituality practiced in Latin American and Caribbean countries. By the time I saw The Love Witch at twenty-one, I was ready to experiment with the occult.

As I grew acquainted with my newfound spirituality, I fell in love with what magick gave me. I was navigating young adulthood on my own and still grieving my parents’ divorce three years after the fact. With magick, I finally felt a sense of agency in a world that had been fraught with betrayal. My dad had left my mother for another woman—and essentially another life—and my relationship with him had fallen apart. Practicing magick filled a void, giving me an inexplicable, deep connection to my ancestors, even ones I’d never met. I called to them during some of my rituals, lighting a candle with their names indelible beneath the blackened wick. I envisaged them as a benevolent haze that filled the room, encircling me with the protection and love I longed for from my earthly family.

During breaks between my college courses, I roamed Los Angeles, seeking out new metaphysical stores to find magickal items to incorporate into my practice. On one of my trips to the city, I discovered a warehouse-like, nondescript space with thousands of religious and spiritual goods: a botánica, common in Latinx communities around the globe. Within minutes, my basket was heavy with candles, incense, and herbs. I went aisle by aisle until I reached the oils section, where I stood transfixed and giddy. Before me were enticing labels like Irresistible, Quiéreme (Love Me), and Regresa a Mí (Come Back to Me). I’d heard about oils like this but hadn’t yet tried them. Love magick was already a mixed bag, and not without ethical considerations—namely, interfering with another soul’s free will. But I was barely twenty-one, and my love life felt as though it was perpetually hinging on disaster.

I was often attracted to men ten or more years my senior who were physically but not emotionally mature—it was not lost on me that I was in search of a father figure. Enter “A,” a handsome thirty-two-year-old professor I’d met online, who taught at a neighboring university. He took me to art openings, where I pretended to be older and more sophisticated than I was, and he introduced me to his friends, who were local artists and intellectuals. This decidedly adult life was exciting to me, and I was smitten, ignoring any sign that it would not last.

“Interesting outfit,” he said to me when I arrived on his doorstep for one of our dates, donning a vintage negligee as a dress. He looked me up and down, perplexed by my appearance. Taking inspiration from The Love Witch, I had put on cerulean eyeshadow and thick winged liner, batting my false lashes as I stood before him. He raised his eyebrows and sighed. I entered his apartment, sensing his unwavering gaze as I reclined on his leatherette couch.

After a month of being together, he broke things off, first stating that I was too young, which, evidently, I was, then explaining, to my great surprise, that there was something not-quite-right in our relationship. In hindsight, he was correct. My friends, who I had told about this budding relationship, implored me to stop chasing after men who do the bare minimum. But there I stood in the botánica, still believing that I was in love with him, and staring at Regresa a Mí. Into my basket it went.

A few days later, I conducted a ritual, walking around my bedroom in a clockwise circle to contain my spiritual energy and seal off the outside world. I called first for my ancestors, and then the four elements: Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. I closed my eyes tightly, envisioning a dome of light above me. I reached for Regresa a Mí. I had Googled a spell, which suggested I write my love interest’s name on a piece of paper and then dab it with oil, but I had an impulse to use the oil directly on my body instead. The pink liquid smelled faintly of roses as I wrote A’s name on my chest with my finger. I tilted the bottle once more to etch a pentacle beneath his name, a symbol for invocation. “Come back to me,” I whispered several times, finally releasing my ancestors and the elements. I opened my eyes, exhaling deeply, and dispersed the imaginary circle by walking counterclockwise.

That morning, I had planned on visiting my father. Even though we’d grown distant since the divorce, I tried to see him once every couple of months. Perhaps I’d fallen victim to rosy retrospection. We’d had our ups and downs, but we’d been close when I was a teenager, and I desperately wished for the softer, sweeter version of him that I remembered. I went to my vanity to get ready to drive to his house.

As I sat in front of my oval mirror to draw on my winged eyeliner, the color a perfect match to my dark hair, my phone vibrated with a text from “N,” a name I hadn’t seen in months. I shifted my hair to one side, peering down at the obsidian screen. N was a musician I’d briefly dated the year before, who had broken up with me because he was leaving to go on tour, among other reasons. While the break-up was hardly amicable, we still occasionally exchanged hi / hope you’re well texts, but this message was more than a hello. A part on N’s Volkswagen had been recalled, and he was taking the train, and just happened to be stopping in my father’s town outside LA the same time I’d be there. N wanted to know if I was available, and whether I could pick him up and take him back to the city with me.

What are the chances? I thought to myself, wondering if the oil was doing its magick—but on the wrong person.

You’re in luck, I replied, and agreed to pick N up from the train station. Maybe I hadn’t been clear enough in casting my spell. Had I been thinking of N subconsciously? Was this fate telling me that N was the one who deserved a second chance, not A? I mused on these questions as I drove down to my father’s house, where we attempted to bond over old photographs. When our conversations got stilted, as they often did during our visits, he reached for something tangible like a magazine or vinyl record, eager to find a new topic to cut the silence. Today, it was an old photo album.

“It was a simpler time back then,” he said to me as he handed over a portrait of my mother holding my older sister in her arms.

He reached for a photo of himself in his thirties on a motorcycle. His hair, which had thinned immensely, was thick and to his shoulders in the picture. He smiled, swallowing hard. For someone who had been so determined to move on, my father relished the past. As I gazed at his shrinking frame and wrinkled face, such a sharp contrast with the photo in his hand, it occurred to me that we were both in search of a version of him who was a distant memory.

***

“Thank you for picking me up,” N said as he climbed into my car smelling of spearmint and sandalwood. Streetlights encircled the train station, and their hazy orange glow made everything look dreamlike. “It’s been a while,” he continued. I murmured something to the effect of “Sorry about your car,” and turned onto the freeway. As we caught up, I was distracted. My spell had brought me back an ex-boyfriend, but not the one I’d wanted. I thought of the image on the tiny Regresa a Mí bottle, a comic book-style man and woman passionately kissing, and wondered if by the time I dropped N off at home, we’d be locked in an ardent embrace. It was hard to imagine. Talking to him was like talking to an old friend, not a lover.

“As a thank you for picking me up, whatdoya think of grabbing a drink in Silver Lake?” N said. It was a balmy Wednesday evening, not yet seven o’clock. I assumed that street parking wouldn’t be too bad, and although I had class the next day, it was early enough that I would get home at a reasonable hour.

“That sounds great,” I replied. “Where were you thinking?”

We pulled up to a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. Beyond the nameless cement façade was a dark, wooden interior lit sparsely by candlelight and incandescent bulbs, the space completely empty save the bartender and a floating server. I imagined reclining in one of the green velveteen loveseats in front of the stained-glass panels, but N took a seat at the bar, and, eager to please, I automatically followed. We ordered our drinks, and then N sat up.

“Be right back,” N said, walking toward the restroom. The bartender asked me if it was my first time at the restaurant, and I said yes, it was, that I had never imagined such quaintness on one of Los Angeles’s busiest streets.

“You have to go see the patio,” she said. “Everything is in bloom,” I thought I heard her add. I took a sip of my drink and looked toward the back window and noticed a lone couple deep in conversation. I could only see the back of the man’s head, but I could tell from the way he was nodding that he was attentive to the red-headed woman with him. God, N is taking forever, I thought, wondering how much longer I’d be forced to witness other people falling in love.

A few moments later, the attentive man from the verdant patio rose and came inside, opening the door slowly. As he made his way toward me, I squinted, attempting to make out his face in the darkness. Suddenly, he stopped, close enough for me to see his wide eyes. They were practically falling out of his head. Mine might’ve been too.

It was A. The handsome professor. The ex-boyfriend I’d wanted to come back.

“Oh my god,” I said aloud. Just then, N returned from the bathroom, crossing right in front of A. I choked on my drink.

A recovered from his own shock, and simply said, “Whoa,” then left without another word. At the door to the men’s room, he turned around once more before disappearing inside.

N rejoined me at the bar.

“Remember the guy I was telling you about in the car?” I said, my voice shaking. “That was him.”

“What in the world are you talking about?” replied N, clearly not remembering that part of our conversation. For the first time in a while, I noticed how attractive he looked. Beneath the dim light, I appreciated how hazel his eyes were, how supple his skin seemed. Maybe the rose-scented oil under my shirt was playing tricks on me, or maybe I was reeling from seeing A. By the end of the night, I found myself in a passionate embrace with N, and we went home together.

When we parted after midnight, I called my friends, telling anyone who would listen about my success with Regresa a Mí. “Not just one ex, but two,” I shouted. “What are the odds?”

My reunion with N was a one-off, but after that night at the restaurant, A and I started texting again. We mused about how odd it was to run into each other and went on several more dates in the following weeks, somewhat resuming our relationship. But despite my best efforts to preserve what I thought A and I had, we split up again. Sometimes what’s meant to be is more important than what we desperately wish for. And sometimes, we don’t even know exactly what we’re wishing for.

My father and I never did get close again, but on that day, poring over photos, I was reminded that the person I loved was still with me, even if he didn’t necessarily come back.

I met my now-husband, “L,” without the help of a love potion, though our meeting felt quite mystical. Like A, I had connected with him online. I was twenty-two. We exchanged messages intermittently, until one day, I impulsively decided to meet him. All I wanted that evening was someone to share a glass of wine with after a long day at work. As I looked through my matches, I kept scrolling back to L’s profile picture. He was very attractive, appeared to be tall, and his profile said he was British. I had recently returned from a vacation with a friend to England, so I at least knew I’d have that to talk about with him. I texted a variation of the words, are u free to meet, and he responded that he was.

We selected an upscale bar in Pasadena, and as I descended the stairs of the parking structure, I texted him to let him know that I arrived. Mid-text, I stopped: there he was, silhouette sharp against the waning daylight.

“Hi,” I said, at a loss for words. I hadn’t expected to be so immediately attracted to him. We walked into the bar and discussed our lives, and coincidentally, I had met one of his friends in England, the cousin of my Airbnb host—in a country of more than 57 million people. The date continued late into the evening, and we saw each other nearly every day after that, eventually moving in together and getting married after six years of dating.

Nowadays, I do the occasional ritual during full and new moons and pull tarot cards for advice, even as I waver between being agnostic and an atheist. I wear my grandfather’s golden Hamsa almost every day, along with evil eye jewelry, because it makes me feel protected and close to my family. Magick is in my blood. An open curiosity and belief in the beyond—beyond what meets the eye, beyond organized religion, beyond logic. Magick exists whether or not I wear talismans or use enchanted goods. It exists in my garden, where I grow herbs and flowers from seeds; in my home, where my familiars have taken the form of two cats and a dog; and in the evenings, when the gentle breeze and absence of leaves reminds me that autumn is imminent, and I feel one with nature. I may not cast spells with oils anymore, but I know that when something is too strange to be logical, too strong of a coincidence, there may be other forces at play. I find myself going back to my initial answer: yes, I believe in magick with a “k.”

Taylor Harrison is an American writer whose work has been featured or is forthcoming in a variety of literary magazines, including P.O. BOX OUTER SPACE, Cosmic Daffodil, Women’s Studies, and more. You can learn more about her by following her Instagram account, @tharrisonwriting.