All Time Runs into this Holiday
Inside the bottles are leaves, ribbons, letters I wrote while Rhys slept through morning. A grey cat leaps onto the glowing terrace and circles the table, the ancestors. The lady, regal gypsy of the song and the storm and the sea, is our guest in the tower. She gives me a blue apothecary bottle: foxglove, rose petals, gold-green ribbon around a fragile scroll. Inkwell, flask, crystal perfume: holding my letters, the unknown answers. The lady cuts the Tarot, right to left, books of shadows, diaries, pages airy and spiralling in lantern light, dealt: men, castles, rivers, woodlands. The Moon, two Pages, she whispers of my children and my love, reveals cards as keys to the places where they wait. All time runs into this holiday. Breathe, she says, from the other side. We rise beyond the lines, the papers, the storm, all the stars in theatre.
Ariel Dawn lives in Victoria, British Columbia with her son and daughter. She spends her time writing, reading, studying Tarot, and working on her first collection of prose poems. Recent work appears in Guest, Train, and Litro.