Carrying it and moving are the same thing

FRIDAY, 25 SEPTEMBER

the six of swords is the card of the crossing, the stretch between what happened and wherever you are heading, and it turns up when somebody is a good deal further along than she feels.

grief does not sit in the big moments. it lives in objects and errands. a jar nobody else can open. handwriting on the back of an envelope. the particular sound the house makes on a friday evening when the week finally lets go of you.

and the anniversaries nobody else remembers are the heavy ones. the day of the phone call, not the funeral. the ordinary tuesday that turned out to be the last normal one. everybody around you has moved their attention along, which is not unkindness on their part, it was simply never their date.

friday is when the week loosens its grip and things arrive. if something arrives today, it is not a setback and you have not gone backwards. carrying it and moving are the same thing, and they always were.

what is worth leaning into today: letting the object be what it is. you do not have to decide anything about it today.

what is worth staying away from: measuring yourself against how long you believe this is supposed to take. that schedule was never real and nobody has ever met it.

my advice for today: if a date is coming that only you know about, put something small in the diary near it. not a distraction, a kindness with a time attached. the day goes differently when it has one fixed point in it.

is there a date coming that nobody else has in their calendar. you can tell me just the month if that is easier to write.

/ a story

the drawer that does not get opened

this one comes up often. a woman keeps a drawer, or a coat still on its hook, or a box at the bottom of the wardrobe that she does not open, and the not opening has gone on long enough that it has quietly become part of the furniture.

when it gets read, it tends to move through three positions.

the eight of cups. something was walked away from, not out of coldness but because standing next to it cost too much at the time. what it carries is a decision that never got announced to anybody. for her it means the avoiding was a choice she made for a reason, rather than a failure of nerve she has to answer for now.

the four of pentacles. the holding on. what it carries is the fear that opening the drawer is the same as agreeing to lose the person a second time. for her it means the grip is protective rather than stuck, which is both the kinder reading and the more accurate one.

the ace of cups. the small return of something. what it carries is not resolution, and it does not pretend to be. for her it means there is usually one object in there she would genuinely like out in the room with her, and finding that one is a completely separate errand from clearing anything out.

the three of them say the same thing from different angles. nobody has to empty a drawer in order to stop being frightened of it. taking one thing out and putting it somewhere you can see it is the whole of the job, and the rest can stay shut for as long as it needs to stay shut.

if there is one object you would like out where you can see it, i would like to know what it is. the object on its own is plenty.