August 21, 2008
SINGLE CARD SPREAD
| RACHEL SWIRSKY |
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I’ll read if you wish, but you’ll draw the Moon.
What did I tell you? Look at her: the complimentary beauty of yes and no, flee and stay, spring and winter. She is deception, a face that seems one way in the light but reveals another mien when it falls into shadow.
That’s the trouble with the Moon. She’s an uncertain future. She’s a boon lined with serrated teeth. She’s an epiphany that tingles through you like a dream only to drain just as suddenly, leaving only a memory of inspiration.
She reveals nothing.
I could pretend otherwise. I’ve lied about these cards many times, to please a deep-pocketed customer, or save a doomed fellow some pain. But I won’t lie to you. Not about this. Not today.
Listen. Most lives languish in the peasantry of numbered cards, their days pathetic handfuls of Cups and Wands. Fortunetellers spin the cards when they deal for such, titillating bored old men with impossible futures composed of Fools and Chariots and Hanged Men.
A few men and women live out epic fates, whirling between Hierophants and Priestesses, Towers and Justice. They think themselves great schemers, great leaders, great adventurers—and yet, the cards penetrate their futures with ease. Kismet yanks such luminaries along their preordained paths whether they will it or no, just like any peasant with her Pentacles.
Then there’s the Moon. Full of yes and no, trust and fear. Don’t you see? You and I, we draw the Moon because we have no fate.
No, no, we’re not dying. The cards pierce the veil as easily as humans sweep aside cobwebs. The Moon’s gift isn’t death. It’s uncertainty. You and I will tread our way eternally across the tightrope of the present, our arms flung out to taunt gravity, our bellies filled with excitement and dread at each step.
I don’t know what will happen after you give your answer. I don’t even know what your answer will be.
I could tell you that the Moon predicts a future full of prosperity and joy, bright as polished silver. But I don’t want to coax a yes from your pretty lips with an even prettier falsehood. I want you to decide for yourself, uncertain and unencumbered, full of risk and joy.
Our future is the Moon. It could be anything.
I’ll ask again.
Will you marry me?
Rachel Swirsky is a fiction MFA student at the Iowa Writers Workshop and a graduate of Clarion West 2005. To date, she has published fiction, poetry, and articles in a variety of nationally distributed publications including Odyssey Magazine, Interzone, the Konundrum Engine Literary Review, and Subterranean online. Rachel blogs about writing, politics, and daily musings at velourmane.livejournal.com. She also writes for the feminist site www.amptoons.com/blog and for the blog of L. Timmel Duchamp’s Aqueduct Press (aqueductpress.blogspot.com) which examines the intersections of feminism and science fiction.