I listen for stories.
That’s what I do.
There was this old Black woman, see.
We met when I was in college.
During my vaguely spiritual phase.
(It was Zen Buddhism next, but I digress.)
She was a neighborhood fortune teller,
Worked out of her living room.
Maggie the fortune teller.
She told mine with cards,
And lifelines and mumbo-jumbo.
She had me figured out.
I was the foolish white boy
Who would give her money
To know the unknowable.
That guy was so dumb.
I loved her, I think. A little.
She knew it, too.
I was a bare-footed pilgrim,
walking a new but dusty trail,
And she was an unknowing signpost
One I thought would show me the way.
She didn’t know that. I was just a mark to her.
But it thrilled me,
To have someone flatteringly reveal
Things I hadn’t figured out:
Who I was, what I would be,
Where I would go, who I would meet,
Where the dangers lurked.
Part of me knew it was a con.
I didn’t care.
I don’t remember any of her patter,
And look at my younger self’s
Puppy-like innocence
With a shake of the head, tolerance.
It reminds me I was once young enough
To be such a fool,
An probably will be one again.
There were days and years after that
With a million unintended consequences,
Deaths and loss and births
And suffering and pain and bills and the flu, and yes,
Ineffable joys—none that Maggie foretold.
But, oh, what I would give
To inhabit that boy again, for even an hour,
And see the world afresh, to just believe
And see the future as something hopeful, knowable,
Trusting once more that it had a place for me.
©Hemmingplay 2016
You are breaking my heart with this one.
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