poemtry and prose

"Hey Lexi," came the high pitched, perky voice on the other end. "Where have you been? We have not seen you around campus for quite some time now and it started to worry Professor Wilks."

Lexi leaned her back against the wall, "Yeah. I know. I have not really felt up to doing much of anything lately. Since Dylan left, you know, I have been feeling rather depressed."

Claudia had been Lexi's best friend the past two years but after the breakup and a few months spent apart, Lexi had no idea why she ever hung out with the girl. She was beautiful and her inner strength could be persuasive. Claudia was the type of girl who loved a good party and always had to be the center of attention. After the last time they went to a karaoke bar and Lexi managed to get enough courage to actually sing her favorite song, Heart of Glass, Claudia followed it up with some Christian Arguelia song but opened her time by making fun of the choice that Lexi had made. Since then, all the trust that she had in her friend sort of dwindled away and she found herself wanting to focus more on school and nest more often at her house.

"Awww, sweetie. You know that things will get better, after all boys are stupid and dumb. Besides you are pretty and will find someone new soon. I am sure of it. We just gotta get you out of the house more often. Speaking of which, the girls and I were gonna go out tonight to that new bar, Convergence Cafe, to go see some local hard rock group play. Apparently they sound like some cross between Disturbed and Nine Inch Nails, so it should be a good time. You really do need to get out of the house, so why not come with us?"

"I dunno Claudia. As you mentioned, I have not spent a lot of time on campus, which means my work and dissertation are falling behind. I need to read through a few books and then see what time I have after that." Lexi rolled her eyes, and then closed them. She was hoping that Claudia would just let her be, so she could get on with her life. She did not want a confrontation today as she was rather tired of it all and really just wanted to focus on school and her research. "Tell you what though, if I get everything done and have some time left over, I promise you that I will call you back... you are on your cellphone right?"

"Yeah, I am."

"Okay, so yeah, if I get some things accomplished today, I will go. So I will let you go and then call you later to tell you whether or not I will be able to go. Talk to you soon, okay?"

Lexi heard an audible sigh on the other end of the line and a simple, "Sure" before the line went dead with the sound of the phone service's flat beep sound. Lexi turned off the cell phone and stuck her tongue out at it. "Guess that is what I get for having good friends like that," she muttered.

The conversation had put her in a bad mood and she did not really feel like wanting to work on research on a Saturday afternoon. Lexi sat on her bed and looked around the room again, scanning for some alternative to do. She had dishes piled up in the sink, but that did not sound like something she wanted to do either; then her eyes laid on her backpack. Remembering the tarot deck needed a bag to properly rest in, she decided that going to the store would be a great thing to do. Lexi leapt off her futon and rushed over to her closet. She decided that she was gonna wear a black pair of jeans and her favorite comfy grey hoodie t-shirt. It was definitely turning out to be a comfort sort of day and the clothes not only looked good on her but would keep her warm in the cooling autumn weather. She slipped on a pair of socks that had a black and blue diamond hareliquin print over her feet and wiggled her toes. She then completed the outfit by slipping on her well worn doc marten 10-holed boots.

Into the bathroom she went and after the water got to a nice and warm, tepid degree she splashed it over her face and hair. Lexi ran her fingers through her wavy hair in a half-hearted attempt to make her self presentable in public. Not happy with the appearance she decided to wear her hair back in a scrunchy. She grabbed some powder and a light red lipstick and added that to her face. She stared at herself in the mirror. Her green eyes looked tired, even after all the sleep she just had. She smiled at the reflection that stared back and noticed how white her teeth seemed. Other than that, her complexion was okay, she tried to take good care of her body, despite the fact that she did not eat as much or as well as she should.

"Okay, Lex," she said to herself. Pull yourself together. You can and will get through this. I know you are hurting right now but things will and can get better. First things first, go out and get some silk and then come home and focus on work. You need to finish school. Do not let all the crap your parents said get to you." Adding emphasis to her small little pep-talk, she held up a finger and pointed at the image in the mirror.

Lexi looked behind her shoulder and said, "Okay. I can do this." And then rushed out the door, sweeping her car keys and the backpack off the small, wooden kitchen table.

Twenty minutes later she found herself at the Fabric Depot. The store was a fabric lovers heaven. Built into an old warehouse, the store contained over five thousand square feet of fabric of all sorts. They even had a room dedicated to specialty fabrics such as upholstery and big bulk bolts of leather and other hard to find textile materials. The store broke the fabrics down by groupings and each section had a sign that was hung from chains going high into the ceiling, over the center of each fabric type. Lexi felt overwhelmed and scanned the room for the dangling sign that read Silks or something along those lines.

Finally she spotted her sign, it was all the way towards the back, kitty corner from where she was currently standing. Lexi made her way towards the corner. Bolts of batik and cotton and other fabrics tempted her to purchase them with their shiny and bright patterns and soft and smooth texture. But she knew that if she had purchased anything, she would never really use them. It had been a long time since she dabbled in arts and crafts. She used to be into the whole do it yourself clothing but ever since she got into graduate school she had very little time to do much of anything outside focus on her degree and figure out what her Masters in Anthropology could be used for once she got out of classes.

Lexi ran her hands over the bolts of silk. She knew she only needed a small strip of fabric big and wide enough to cover and keep the Windchaser Tarot safe and secure. But she was not sure which type she really wanted to take home with her. Some of the silks were rough and bumpy, raw silk that had yet to be made into the soft and slippery variety that she was more familiar with. Others felt like cotton and were woven into some strange hybrid fabric between the two. Finally, after awhile of searching and touching fabrics she found what she was looking for. It was a simple black silk cloth. One side was still raw and bumpy but the other side was very smooth and soft to the touch. Lexi decided that she liked the idea of having the dichotomy between rough and smooth silk to encase her precious cards in. The smooth side would keep them as new as possible while the raw silk would give her something a bit more grip-able. She reached out with both arms and finagled the bolt off the case that it had been sitting on. She had to pull and prod it a bit since the row of fabrics was stuffed fat with bolts.

With the bolt in hand, she moved towards the check out counter. Lexi felt as if everyone in the whole store was watching her carry the bolt up to that counter, wondering what such a person like her was going to do with the fabric. Heat flushed up into her face and she stood in line, shifting her body weight from one foot to the other. There were three other people in line ahead of her and she rocked back and forth as she waited.

"Next," called a gruff and husky voice from the counter. Lexi took her bolt and proceeded to the counter to have her fabric cut. The elderly woman wore a red smock and held a pair of fast cut scissors in her hand. A tape measure was draped around her neck and she looked tired from having to cut fabric and help customers all day long.

"Hey hon," she said. "What can I help you with?"

Lexi sat the bolt of fabric on the counter and unfolded a strip, "I do not need to much. All I think I really need is just a long strip, long enough to wrap a small pack of cards around in and wide enough to fold the sides over them as well."

The lady nodded and moved the bolt into position for cutting, "So do you say you may need this much?" She poised her clippers over the fabric, waiting for the go ahead to cut the fabric.

Lexi bit her lip and looked at the fabric. She leaned against the counter and scratched her head with her left hand. She shrugged at the lady and then said, "Yeah I guess that is going to be enough fabric. Go ahead and cut it up for me." She swung her sling back around to her chest and looked for her wallet.

The Fabric Depot clerk found the seam on the silk and snipped the scissors into the fabric and then slid them along in the metal gutter they used to cut and accurately measure out fabric for customers. After a few seconds, Lexi had her small piece of silk, neatly folded and primed for her tarot deck. She paid for the fabric with some spare change in the bottom of her bag and then left the store carrying the piece in her hand.

The afternoon air was growing colder and Lexi rushed to get back home. Her stomach growled in hunger and Lexi decided to make another pack of Raman. Her thoughts started fluttering back to Dylan, and how he would make her dinners or take her out on his dime. She realized that eating nothing but Raman was starting to get to her and she wished that she had someone to treat her out to a nice meal that did not include noodles and dehydrated vegetables. Eating her chicken flavored raman with a few extra eggs dumped into it had put her in a sad and depressing mood again.

She turned on her MP3 player again, and flipped through some of the songs, hoping to locate a favorite song that would not bring back memories of Dylan or other sad and depressing moments in her life. Finally the iPod settled on some old school industrial as Xotox's Lass Mich started blasting through her player's tiny speakers. The music was working it's charm for after eating, Lexi not only put her dishes in the sink but cleaned them as well as started picking up around the tiny apartment.

"Yay for motivation," Lexi smirked to herself when she was done with all the straightening up in her place. "It almost appears like I am somewhat of a person who lives in a real home, instead of a pig sty."

The sun moved from mid-afternoon sun over to an autumn dusk. The activity outside her apartment started picking up as many of the college student tenants started slamming doors and turning up the music from their own stereos. She heard a few catcalls being hollered by the boys who lived across the way. Lexi wandered over to her only floor lamp. It was a black metal design and had three paper lamp shades that hung from Shepard's crooks that helped to illuminate her apartment. She flipped on the light switch to this floor lamp and sat back down on her futon.

"I guess it is time for me to do some studying now." She reached over and grabbed a stack of books off the floor. After having cleaned her room the five stacks of books lowered and combined into three. She pulled the top book off and set that into her lap and opened it. Within a few seconds of noticing what she was reading, she stopped. She had grabbed the tarot book instead of one of the many tomes of anthropological studies. Lexi contemplated putting the book back but decided that since it was already in her lap to poke around and read a bit more in there.

"Consider this a warm up to getting my real work done," she thought. "Either that or this is a real break I needed as I just can not seem to focus on getting my studies done." She dragged the sling back oevr to her bed too and took out both the Windchaser Tarot and the new black silk strip. Once again she carefully removed the cards from their box and then unfurled the silk strip to its full length. Purposefully she sat the cards down on the silk and positioned them so they sat in the center of the fabric. Then she folded the short edges over the sides of the cards and rolled the cards over the remaining fabric. When she got to the end of the strip, she tucked the tip of the silk in between a few of the other silk wrapping layers.

She held the small package in her hand and smiled. "There you go. Now you have a proper home." She patted the package as she set it down besides her to continue reading the book. During the time that she spent reading in the book, she learned that the tarot worked off the personal symbolism of people. That all the pictures on the cards were composed of things that had meanings in them and that these meanings drew from the subconsciousness of the people working with it. The tarot deck was a tool to help people grow and change and if used correctly it could help a person gain an upper hand at getting what they wanted out of their life and from the world. The statement written in the book struck a chord on something that Naomi had told her about doing tarot rituals. Lexi wondered if it was even possible to do a tarot ritual that would help her maybe gain more focus on her life and work and maybe help her to put Dylan and the bad breakup behind her.

Lexi flipped to the yellow sticky note that she had placed inside the book on the section with the rituals. Once again she scanned the section and read through the general outline that the book's author proposed to do a ritual. She would need some things to represent the four elements, earth, fire, wind and water. She would need a few candles and the cards. Looking around the room, she decided that she would also use a picture of her and Dylan that could be torn up to physically help separate them and return them to some normal course of daily lifestyle. Other than a bowl of water and the incense stick to use for air, Lexi was not sure what else she had to use for Air and fire. She was already using a candle but did not think that the candle could be used for both. Having read a bit more of the book, she learned that the four Ace cards, Ace of Rocks, Ace of Wands, Ace of Cups, and Ace of Swords could also be used to represent the four elements so she decided to use the deck and the Aces for the ritual.

She unwrapped the deck and quickly sorted out the four Aces from the rest of the deck. Pausing only to look at each Ace she set them near her on her bed. The Ace of Rocks had a small green lizard sitting on a branch that hovered over a rock with a pentagram carved into it. The Ace of Cups had a school of Japanese koi swimming through the white and blue background as a golden chalice adorned with red and green and silver gemstones sat tucked in the floor of a sandy earth. The Ace of Swords featured a long single sword that was stuck downwards in the earth, almost reminding Lexi of the whole King Arthur story about the sword in the stone. And finally, the Ace of Wands showed a long wooden staff planted firmly in the ground while it's crook had a yellow glowing crystal set atop it. The staff almost looked like a very tall sunflower. She then decided to lay the four Aces in their cardinal directions near her bed.

Next, at least according to the book, Lexi needed to find cards that represented the problem at hand and any people that were involved. So she searched the deck to find two cards that almost represented her and Dylan. She selected the Strength card to represent herself as the card had a young girl dressed in a long flowing green renaissance dress standing and petting a rather large fuzzy lion. She liked the idea that the girl was taming the lion and as she loved cats but could not take care of one, it seemed to fit. The card Lexi choose for Dylan was the Knight of Wands which had a tall, masked knight atop a red horse. As she never felt that she really knew what Lexi called was her dark knight, the card suited him perfectly. These two cards went into a different pile on her bed.

Then she searched the deck to find a scene that matched her mind's idea of what the problem was. This time she selected three more cards. The first one, was The Lovers card. She felt that it pretty much accurately described the core of her issues, with an image of two lovers who dressed very ornately, while kissing under a blue moon. In addition to this card, Lexi also grabbed the Temperance card, with an image of a woman gazing into a crystal ball that held two dragons entwined in a yin-yang image within. She also had pulled out the Three of Cups. This image had a a picture of three mermaids smiling and holding hands and laughing as they swam around three cups that were floating in water. She decided that this card reflected the outcome of all that this ritual was going to be. She wanted to reconnect to her friends and be able to laugh and hang out with them more often than she did. While Lexi liked to have her space and privacy, she did prefer to be surrounded by friends and have fun experiences.

Lexi stood up and stretched from having sat on the hard wood floor. She looked around for the candles and incense and located them sitting on top of one of her book cases. She went over to where they were and grabbed them along with an incense holder and lighter. She peeled the plastic off one of the two candles and threw the plastic away. Then ceremoniously placed the incense in the holder and light the end, while watching it burn for a little bit. Once the charcoal caught fire, Lexi waved the flame out with her hand. Smoke began to slowly rise and after a few minutes her apartment filled once again with the smell of dragon's blood.

Lexi dragged the tarot book back over and read through the ritual. So far she had been doing everything right. So far everything seemed to be right. She had her cards, the candles for focus and energy and the incense to cleanse and purify. She propped the book up next to the bed so she could read what was supposed to happen next. Her left hand's second finger scanned the lines of text while her right hand reached out to grab the five tarot cards now scattered in two piles on her bed. She put the picture of her and Dylan between the candles and then added the two tarot cards. She sat in complete silence for a few more minutes and allowed herself to center and collect energy to use in the ritual. She cleared her throat and opened her eyes.

"With these cards, I do represent us, " she said, trying to find words to make the ritual a bit more personal. "You and I were once one, a couple, but now we are not and I am having a very hard time accepting the fact that you have decided to move on. Therefore this ritual is designed to gently cut our cords and allow me to move on with my life and my studies. I need closure Dylan, the sort that you never provided me when we were together. Therefore, I am taking things into my own hands and doing this rite."

She stared at the picture once more, as the emotions and memories swelled inside her mind. Anger mixed with sadness, as she continued. "I place The Lovers next to the Three of Cups and Temperance to represent the emotions I want to come out of this release. I want to be free to be me and do the right thing. I am tired of crying all the time. I want to also feel like I am cared for by my friends and that we can go out and be ourselves. Therefore, Dylan I release you."

She light the candle next and the wax slowly started to pool just around the wick. All of a sudden the candle flickered a bit as a deep rumbling sound from outside sounded. Lexi closed her eyes and imagined that whatever energy had held her and Dylan together had now been severed and that she was free to be on her own, to live her life the way she wanted to and to be the person no one ever really allowed her to be. She gazed into the candle and a strange incantion emerged from her lips:

"For all good there ever was between me and you, shine light,
For all ill that ever existed, to ashes burn,
So that the cycle of love's summer may like autumn-time, turn.
I let you go, come this night;
To allow my self to start burning bright.
Where the two were one, we are now two once more.
I release you, so you release me this night.
So mote it be."

Swiftly her hands shot out and they grabbed the picture. In one fast action she ripped the single picture into two, straight down the middle, separating her and Dylan into two single poses. When the tear neared the end of the picture, Lexi heard once more a loud crack come from outside. This time followed by a flash of lightening and a rumble of thunder. Rain started pouring down outside as the sky opened up in powerful rain storm.

Lexi looked down at the torn picture and smiled. It was done, she had performed not only her first ritual ever but severed the ties that held her and Dylan together. The rain outside almost sounded as if it were a bonus to her ritual, as if the water was washing the past away and cleansing the negativity and allowing her the freedom to start anew. The candle flickered in time with the rain falling outside her apartment and soon Lexi was lulled into slumber once more. She yawned sleepily and blew out the candle, but set the incense on the counter, allowing it to burn itself out. She crinkled the torn picture into two balls and threw them into the trash can. They hit the rim and bounced into the black wire can that she had set next to her desk. She then returned her attention to the tarot deck and the cards that she pulled.

She brought the unused portion of the deck into her hand and started shifting through the cards, looking for the positions that the ritual cards needed to go back into. She slid The Lovers card back between The Hierophant and The Chariot cards followed by the Strength. Temperance went between Death and The Devil, and so on. Then she quickly rifled through the entire deck to validate and make sure that all the cards were indeed in the right and natural order of the deck. And once she was sure that they were all together, she wrapped them up and set them on a shelf in her bookcase.

Lexi yawned once more, smiled at the storm raging outside and fell asleep with the sound of thunder and lightening all around her. "I feel much better. Here is hoping that I can now finally move on with my life," she said as her eyes closed to the darkness sleep brought.