Ladybug, ladybug...

She comes in my days to share her nights.


"I dream of him," she says clenching her slender fingers. I love her nail polish - "Bull's Blood". So dark, so intense.

"I write him notes which I never sent." She murmurs in her soft, distant voice. "I sit on the lawn in front of my shabby house and think of him. He is sucking my juices dry."

"Who is he?"

"The boy from the carnival ship. My parents took me to the Tropic of the Capricorn... He was a Capricorn, you know? So fair, so light... I was dark. Too dark for his liking, yet he told me he loved my Gypsy scarf."

"What happened?"

"The ship reached a harbour."

"He left?"

"We all did. Each on a different path."

"It happens to all of us. All the time. We meet people, we separate from people."

"I never separated from him. Don't you see it? I switched countries, cities, houses, men, jobs, but he wouldn't go away. My life was spent in running away from him."

"You can't run away from your own mind if you don't want to close the drawers and let the memories rest."

"Rest... I forgot the meaning of "rest". The summer is coming. The ships will sail again."

She makes me feel dizzy. The cards are ringing. Ding-dang-dong.

"What do the cards say?"

Eight of Wands, Two of Wands, Page of Cups, Three of Wands... How can I? Should I?

"What is it?" She pours the wine down her throat. Her vision is blurred, her eyes show the bottles drank. Yet, she still radiates this grace of the past which must have drawn him to her. Passion that translates to the cards. Thoughts that rule the spread. She is reaching him, I can see it.

"The cards show you thinking of him... A lot. Time and space are relative, you know?"

"Does he remember me?"

"I don't know... I can see him feeling you... May be."

"How?"

"You make him dreamy. He may recall the boy he was then... Yes, he may."

"What is the end?"

"The end? I don't see an end here. Not yet."

"The three, what does it mean?"

"A ship... coming to your harbour."

"You think..."

"I don't. You are confusing me." Ding-dang-dong, the cards sing.

"Why are you shaking?"

"You're ruling my cards. I can't trust this reading. It's you, not me, here."

Liar. It's not her. It's the boy in the vineyards that summer when the plump grapes were catching the late afternoon sun and I was laying on the scorched ground. The juice was dropping in my hair and the bees were drinking of my curls. He had been looking at me for hours, he said. The boy turning into man; his sky blue eyes bathing me in the waves of the ocean nearby.
"Where are you?" She asks twisting her cigarette nervously.

"In a valley. Someone drew the Commanderie card for me once and I thought "La Rochelle"..."
"What happened there?"
"I lost something. Gladly."
"Why didn't you stay?"
"I ran away."
"Why?"
"I was wise, I thought."
"I see... I envy you."
"Don't. This man of yours... This boy, did you meet him again?"
"How could I? Three worlds are separating us. The physical where he is thousands of kilometres away; the emotional where he attached himself while my heart was falling apart, and the world of the rich where I can't enter."
"Yet, the Wheel of Fortune is always turning."
"Not mine. Thank you for the reading. I may write him another letter tonight."
"The Moon is waxing. Your power is growing."
"Yeah, yeah... Take care."

"You too."

She leaves in her dancing manner, her curves tempting the eye, her black hair twisting like a snake on her back. How could he leave her? She was a Boticelli painting walking the Earth. One of the goddesses. Ding-dang-dong. Yes, I can feel her too. She's shaking my existence with her insane passion. I hate her for awakening memories I had so carefully buried. I draw a card. The Lovers. Another. Ace of Wands. Last. The Devil. I pray.
"Please, save me from the temptation of the past and grant me the grace of the future."
Ding-dang-dong. The touch is gentle. She lands on my hand in her regal red mantle. Dots, dots, dots, like grapes falling on the fertile ground. She caresses me, she promises me rainbows. A messenger of the faeries, an emissary of the skies.

"Ladybug, ladybug, fly his way,
And tell him I still wait..."