By: Brian Michael Barbeito

it was a long day. sometimes the rains arrived out of nowhere and other times the impossibly hot sun that also blinded us. I was sitting beside the tarot reader at a fair. heck, i thought, it’s a nice area but not a lot of patrons. I looked over to her. ‘Hey Mum,’ I asked, ‘how are things?’ she sighed and said, ‘Slow.’ I told her I listened all the time to people who read the cards and had a great respect for them. ‘I can’t remember the cards, but can get some spirit messages.’ we spoke the same language and she understood. she stood up and shuffled and pulled a card for me. ‘It’s a very dark deck, but it is what it is.’ the card was a death card. ‘It could mean lots, like the end of something,’ she said. I told her I knew. she sat down and we both continued to stare out across to where the yellow flowers stood still under some electric lights. dusk was blooming, taking over the day, tumbling it down. sometimes there wasn’t much to do but wait it all out.