I’ve always felt like I’m six feet. A hundred feet. Ok, maybe 500 feet, a mile at most from where I’m supposed to be. Do you know what I mean? Like sometimes I see the finish line and sometimes I know it’s around the corner and when I neither is true, I just have to wait until it i.
Cassidy disagrees with me. She says I’m not miles but years from being anything. She says I switch my direction so often, how is the finish line supposed to know where to be? She says the only thing I’m close to finishing is dinner. And that eating dinner twice in a sitting doesn’t count as an accomplishment.
Cassidy talks a lot. I’m not trying to turn her into a villain. She’s probably a more accurate narrator of my life than I am. If I let her take over, though, then I wouldn’t like living in the inside of my brain.
Cassidy says she loves me but I know she doesn’t love my brain. She thinks her love is like medicine and that it will fix me.
I think what will fix me is not listening to her.
You see why this is a problem.
Tonight is our anniversary — four years. I am 26. We started dating when we were clay. Cassidy wonders why, despite all the work she’s put into me, I’m not in the shape she wanted. I see her looking at me in the morning, eyes scanning my outfit. What she is saying is: get back in the kiln. One more go. We can get this right.
The thing is, and it’s impossible to argue with this thing, Cassidy could do “better” than me. Better in exactly all the senses your mind went.
Better as her mom will be happier, her grandma assured the family genes are going to be carried forth by a steed of good breeding, her dad confident I will be able to put more than just food on the table but also spontaneous trips.
Strangers on Instagram will think, “What a good looking couple. That man is tall enough for her.”
Her colleagues won’t know the difference. They will love meeting the mysterious boyfriend.
Unfortunately for them it is not that simple. I wish I could study the air between us and figure out why it’s stronger than the air between other moving objects. Even when she’s nasty to me just with eyes, I want to be curled around her, breathing in her. I know this air. It is familiar. The rest of the city is just smog.
And sometimes I wonder if this is the air that is keeping me in place. Because how am I supposed to run if I can’t take a breathe? How can I run if it’s too thick to move through? Filled with expectation, someone else’s.
Listen. I remember when I was a kid and my dad bought a kite for my 13th birthday. He remembered it that year. He said even though I was a teenager I should still be allowed to be a kid. Cheesy, I said out loud, but secretly I was relieved to have permission to stay here for a while. There was no activity on the mustache front. I felt behind and now I could be behind.
On a Tuesday at dusk we went to the park and flew and ran until we couldn’t see the dragon in the sky. There was no resistance that night. Now, it’s the opposite, all the time. It’s getting off the plane in a humid city when you were used to Alaska, you know?
I wonder if Cassidy and I should try to be the kites instead of the people controlling them.
I will try telling her tonight. I’ll try telling her that I am a kite, I am supposed to be a kite.
She will say, I already know it, stop with the metaphors and anyway, I want an airplane, not a kite.
And if she says that I will tell her to board one. I want you to. Go, I’ll say. I hope you go somewhere wonderful. I really do. But I won’t meet you at baggage claim.
About Tiny Tarot Stories
How will it go? I will choose a tarot card. I will write a story, poem or meditation. I will send it out.
Will I do it every day? No, probably not. But I’ll do it often enough that you can expect to see my email in your inbox more often.
Why am I doing this? Because it seems like fun middle finger to ChatGPT, and because a creative writing exercise that will kickstart my longer projects. This is a continuation of the project that I started on my Instagram, @kefi_tarot, during the pandemic. This is a way for me to access the creative engine that sometimes is under a layer of ice (and by ice I mean fear).
Who is this for? Me, but I’m so happy you are here with me. I hope these stories make an opening into tarot’s archetypes and allow you to start seeing the ways archetypes and stories uphold our lives and the people in them.
Can I submit a card? Yes, in the comments, or send me a message.
My goodness, you have the most beautiful way with words. I felt all of this. Thank you for sharing!