i don’t like to talk about it but maybe I do. maybe i do too much. i’m a watery cancer, born in the warm sun of july, us watery crabs like to talk about it and cry about it and cry when you talk about it and we want to wrap our awkward crab like claws around you and tell you ‘you’ll be ok’ and that ‘you are beautiful’ and ‘you are resilient’ and even if we just met, waiting for the same bus, this 5 minutes together has meant so much to me, i’ll never forget it.

i drown in my astrology. i read about the moon. i pull a tarot card. if i don’t like it i pull another. i hear a voice tell me, ‘that’s cheating.’ it can’t be cheating, you don’t know my game and i keep pulling and pulling because my favorites are the hermit and death.

i bring my cards home when i go see my parents in new jersey. my mom has given up and in not so many words, thinks i am a heathen. like pulling cards is so different than saying 10 hail mary’s or praying the rosary, looking for forgiveness or love or a promise.

she’s on her way home to the philippines. back to the mother land. they go every year, like a pilgrimage, like this is where they go to refill their batteries, to draw from the well of familiar, to remember where they are from. they don’t understand why i don’t do the same. it’s like they forget. me. i am from new jersey.