Artist: Anna Maria D’Onofrio
[I didn’t really want to draw this card. I wanted the one above it, but this one fell out of the deck so I felt obliged to take it.]
The three of swords is
that normal-sort of heartbreak—
when you live and things hurt
because you are willing to feel them.
If you aren’t willing to feel
nothing hurts
but that is not living.
It is very difficult to stay not-living
while walking on this earth.
Not even people-hating people are non-living.
People-hating people hurt and hate
and maybe live in heartache more
than you or I with broken hearts.
Zombie-people are the sort
who never draw the three of swords.
I do not know what sort of cards they draw—
they have no future and no past because
they are not present.
Maybe, soul-less, they draw the devil every time
and devils only devils.
Maybe I am wrong— perhaps
they draw threes of swords one after another—
threes and threes of swords that scream—
feel something! feel something!— but—
they cannot hear because
they are not present. Silence.
Zombie is a state of deep, near-death addiction
where times of lucidity are so few or never that
no light comes in and then there is no point
and then there is no living— real death—
beyond which there cannot be feeling like we feel—
feeling that makes us alive.
Feeling makes us alive. Be thankful and
be thankful for the three of swords.
Yes. It is time consuming, but I enjoy being given a daily creative writing assignment. My goal is to have enough notes here to write a book on my own deck in a year and a half.