So I don't know if any of you have had a devastating tarot
reading.
Does this-- is this possible.
I see nod, yes.
You've had one.
Have you ever had a devastating tarot reading
in a room full of your closest friends?
No.
OK.
So that one's a lot.
I will tell you all that three of swords.
The three of swords card is--
and I'll describe it also in the poem.
But it's a heart.
And then there are three swords in the heart.
I was like come on, not in front of everybody.
So this is titled, "Sighting: Tarot, Pflugerville, Texas."
"I learned how to hug here.
How to draw a boundary and hold here
against the gale force of my mother's late night
rage and sob.
Learn, too, what it meant to be chosen, to choose.
Brought myself back to the receiving line.
My chest cracked into two wet pieces
after a fall so lonesome, I wasn't sure I'd survive.
And met the arms practiced in mending.
I asked Jenny to read my cards.
Syd and Shannon on the couch behind me.
Amber and Joe in the kitchen.
Nat in from Berkeley.
The kids running around.
Carlisha, I'm sure, at my right hand.
Jenny spread the Celtic cross.
Gestured as she does, which is to say grandly,
am I present, at the problem we all knew.
The past, the conscious and unconscious.
Waited for the cards to name what we could all see.
There at the position of hopes and fears.
Three swords and one heart.
How rude, I thought.
Do you all see this shit, I said aloud to the room gone quiet.
A relief not to have to say what I had known in the room
where I'd learned the kind of love
possible between friends, now family.
The kindness possible between partners.
Grateful for the rough blow finally landed
and the net to catch me."