Tarot: Temperance

The path she chose could have take her over land and over water. It took her many places she'd never thought it would.

Right now she was in a garden, a garden full of flyblown rose bushes, wizened vines, a willow tree drooping. There was a stone wall around the garden, crumbling. It smelled of moss and petrichor and autumns long past. It smelled like long-faded perfume. When the wind blew and the leaves rustled there was the sound of children laughing.

There were memories in the stones of the garden wall. They spoke in the quietest voices, like the voices of phantoms. Their colours were the shadows of colours. She wiped them off her skin as she walked down the path. They clung to her like sugar on your fingers.

They blew away in the wind when she left the garden.

Art by Woraya Chotikul

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Tarot: The Emperor

The emperor sits atop his throne. Waiting. Always waiting. He was waiting to rule. Now he waits to cease.

His eyes are getting older. His movements slower.

The banquets have passed. The long tables with candelabras and wine and chalices.

There are no more parades, no waving hands and glossy smiles and long velvet trains.

He waits for the winters to come, for the snow to settle and ice to spike the wind.

He prepares for the long summers nad the dry rivers and the ribbons of sunlight through the church windows.

For the smell of roasted nuts and corked wines and the festive confetti and the halls festooned with candles.

One day his eyes will close a little. Then more. And more. Until he sees only light and colour through the slits of his eyelids.

Then he will lean back in his throne, and farther back in his tomb. And another emperor will come.

Art by Woraya Chotikul

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Silence Like Glass

I feel like, in the woods, I can only whisper.

It isn't because of the silence.

It isn't because of the gentle hum of all the crickets.

It isn't for fear that I'll frighten the animals.

It is the darkness. I feel I will break it, that I will open up some light and interrupt it.

That it will shatter like glass.

In the woods, I speak only in whispers.

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Tarot: The Heirophant

I opened the door.

There was a sign beside it that said 'forbidden', but it did not specify which of the three doors was forbidden, though it was on the middle one. I'm sorry.

I was curious what lay beyond it: it was a tall oak door with an old fashioned brass knob. It made me think of whispered secrets and the cover of darkness and it plucked at my curiousity like a violinist's fingers. So I grabbed the cold knob and spun and I was surprised when it opened.

I'm not sure what I expected. Not much. I thought there might be a storage closet, or linens behind it.

But whne it opened it kept opening, the wall with it, then the air. And it keeps going.

The 'forbidden' sign has long since disappeared. I can't make it stop.

It just keeps going.

Art by Woraya Chotikul

Text by Lucie MacAulay