What a Fool Believes

Tryin' hard to recreate

Welcome, and a warm first hello to the newcomers!

I’m so happy you’re here.

I center each of these Sunday posts around a tarot card from the major arcana (the section of the deck that addresses big-picture stuff).

This week finds us at the start of my third cycle of writing through the major arcana: once again, The Fool is the feature. Early interpretations painted this character as someone shamefully lacking in resources. Later, the Fool came to represent someone who faces a long journey with exuberance that makes up for a lack of material goods.

We started seeing beginners as people to help, not people to blame.

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Contents:

1. Sick Day

2. Eat

3. Clean Sweep

4. Border-Dweller

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Suggested background music:

SICK DAY

I woke up feeling absolutely awful on Tuesday,
So I reached out to folks, got coverage, took a sick day.

I didn’t always feel like I had permission to ask
For help, for rest, for just a little restorative break.

(Do you ever feel yourself being poisoned by someone
Just by being near them and listening to what they say?)

Stifle the guilt inside your heart as the hot water runs:
You’re allowed to clean your body. I promise it’s okay. 

The help I need is not always identical to aid
That others would expect or accept: my wants are quite strange.

Clouds form into a mouth of smiling teeth, chewing the birds:
Feathers (awful confetti), finding home on me, like rain.

“Come back, Shelby. Come back,” cries Lizzy Co into the wind:
A guardian only, she cannot remove Shelby’s pain.

EAT

These days, I eat: I rip off lusty bites,
Chunks bigger than my mouth could ever chew. 
I see the world, now, with a different eye.
I love its culinary multitude.

My belly is for filling nowadays,
Not for striving to shrink its true volume.
It has learned all the foods I like to taste:
Allows them inside, gives them elbow room. 

My ass expands just like the Universe:
Folks bump it in passing. I do not mind. 
Being underfed really is the worst:
So chilly, so lightheaded all the time. 

My teeth love to sink into warm pastry:
The flakes each contain their own small release. 

CLEAN SWEEP

I’m learning the difference between myself softened and braced.
A spectrum of muscle fiber leaps when lovers embrace. 

Someone, long ago, stripped my broom bare of its bristles,
Then railed at me for not keeping my home a cleanly place. 

It is a knowing farmer who gives flocks the finest corn.
Shortcuts should not be taken with the loading of the crates. 

How soft can the corners of my eyes become in the dark?
("Just flatten your back to the mattress, and move with the bass.")

Hips hold two thousand transliterations inside their bowls:
The mortar-and-pestle grind of walking softens phrases. 

No más trabajo, no más: exhausted legs cry for rest,
For zero-gravity relaxation, like they’re in space. 

A clean sweep is a rare event, but Lizzy Co will try:
Perhaps the grin of victory will spread across my face. 

BORDER-DWELLER

I have this core belief that I am difficult to love,
That nobody is capable of giving enough love.

I thought there must be something foolish about those kind folks
Who insisted it was easy to give me extra hugs.

I could not bear to know the fact that my folks had two kids
When they only had the time, cash, and energy for one.

I concluded that something about me was just plain wrong,
And I was on my own to find a way to fix me up.

It couldn’t be that my parents needed some extra help.
Instead, it had to be true that I was asking too much.

Perhaps it was how I did not play well with gender roles
That kept me immune from the roaming hands of teenage lust.

When you don’t belong outside, and there’s no room in the house,
A border-dweller is born, someone folks don’t like to trust.

The wind sidles up, whispers: “Shelby, it’s time to let go.
You cannot keep these chains: see how they’re crumbling into rust.”

Are you, or someone you know, the type who likes to read physical books?

Snag your copy of my debut print memoir, Give It A Home, today. (What a lovely holiday gift!)

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