As I begin to clean out your room I see the tarot cards gently placed on your nightstand.
Edges dog-eared and browned from back of house fingers.
Discolored from post-shifts filled with swishers and stolen scotch, I see you counting your tips, throwing pennies to the floor in disgust.
I will find them under your bed later.

Thumbing through the arcana I summon what remains of your DNA through my fingers. The cards are worn, bending into arches like broken backs. 

I would dream of saving you. Spinning my sorrow into silken threads I’d stitch the cavity in your head and in my heart over and over.

I once tried to convince you that you were adopted. The kind of mean joke that older siblings play. You ran to our mother, your unruly eyebrows furrowed as she assured you that you were one of us. 

But I knew the truth.
That you were otherworldly.
A gift, left in our charge, precious and fragile and temporary.
You were magic, and in-between…part earth and part stars. 

This place didn’t love you like I did, its isolation, its $7.25 before taxes, its racist bar patrons who question your right to be in this country while you blankly ask for THEIR IDs, its military that fractured your spirit, its hustle and grind.

Did you turn to these cards for clarity?
Did they reveal who you really are? An extraterrestrial entity, stopping off in this midwestern purgatory to bless us with your beautiful lashes and endless sense of style.

Did you turn to them for instructions for how to go home?

I place the tarot cards in my purse in their own compartment. They will make their final home on my altar, next to your photo and favorite pocket watch.

I will do this, after I clean out your room.