Between Bruises & Blooms

Tonight,

I did not ask the cards to tell me the future.

I asked them to tell me where I had forgotten to listen.

The first card arrived draped in moonlight.

The High Priestess.

She did not speak loudly.

She simply rested between two pillars and reminded me that truth has never needed to raise its voice.

It waits.

Patiently.

Like the tide pulling at the shore, certain I will eventually find my way back.

So I closed my eyes and searched for the voice beneath the noise—

beneath old arguments, old heartbreaks, old versions of myself that still echoed through empty rooms.

And there it was.

Quiet.

Still alive.

Still waiting.

The second card turned upside down, as though the universe was gently tipping my perspective into place.

How many gifts have I overlooked because they arrived wearing unfamiliar faces?

How many doors did I mistake for walls?

How many beginnings did I mourn simply because they did not resemble the endings I had imagined?

Perhaps life has been setting new cups before me all along,

waiting for me to look up.

Then the shadows arrived.

Projection.

A difficult word.

One that asked me to stop searching for villains long enough to search for wounds.

Not every ache belongs to the person standing before us.

Some bruises were left by ghosts.

Some fears learned our names years ago.

Healing, I am learning, is not pretending those wounds never happened.

It is sitting beside them without shame.

It is whispering,

“I know why you hurt.”

“You don’t have to hide anymore.”

And finally—

the Wild Woman stepped through the trees.

Candles flickered.

The moon watched.

A circle drawn not to keep darkness out,

but to remember that I have always carried my own light.

She smiled like someone who had stopped apologizing for taking up space.

She did not ask me to become softer.

She asked me to become truer.

To write without permission.

To love without disguises.

To bloom without asking whether anyone else approved of the flowers.

Tonight,

I think magic isn’t found inside spells or crystals or whispered incantations.

Maybe magic is surviving.

Maybe magic is choosing compassion when bitterness would be easier.

Maybe magic is writing poems from the pieces that once tried to break us.

Maybe magic is listening to the quiet voice that has loved us all along.

So I gather the moon, the cups, the shadows, and the witch,

and place them gently between these pages.

Not as answers.

But as companions.

Because I no longer need the future to reveal itself all at once.

Tonight,

it is enough

to trust my intuition,

to welcome what is waiting,

to meet my shadows with kindness,

and to remember—

the strangest parts of me were never meant to be hidden.

They were always

the most magical.