The Fortune Teller

Sultry summer night, stars

to scared by darkness, I stroll into

“Fortune Reader & Chakra Cleanser”

shop, filled to the brim with antiques

wheezing beneath dust, I wonder

why half of the medallion tapestry tablecloth

has unraveled.

 

“Hmm, what have we here?” says she

with the gnarled face and young hands

an eye of bottled azure in white, the other

spilled brown in capillaries"

“Dearie, let me hold those pretty little hands,”

but she flips only one over

to show palm, epidermal map.

 

Heart line, head line, life line, fate line

index finger, middle finger, straight and parallel,

straight and short, long and curvy:

“Darling, your palm here tells me you

need to loosen up a bit,”

playful touch on my hand

and not previously seen tattoo, half of a balance.

 

She pulls out a stack of kaleidoscopic tarot cards

each card ripped in half vertically:

half of an ocean wave for indefinite thrill,

half of a sun for some sort of passion,

half of a rock for periodic strength,

half of a wheel for some luck here, some money there.

I try to hide my look of sheer confusion.

 

Crystal ball next, half of it

veiled with a thick magnolia cloth

veins of eggshell white run through ghostly blue.

“Honey, I see here that Samson will recover

in the hospital, his chemo fuzz will become hair again.”

She remarks how she didn’t expect a revelation so soon

I pause…didn’t expect.

 

Bewildered, I ask about the one palm,

the halved cards, the partially covered

crystal ball; she replies

“Some things, sweetheart, even I do not know.”

On the way home: unexpected rain showers,

ran into Sally after twenty years, a routine call

from Samson. Cured.