Strength: a wild beast is tamed with calming, loving energy. The lion is a symbol of raw passions and desires, and in taming him, this card shows that animal instinct and raw passion can be expressed in positive ways through the cultivation of mental and emotional, rather than physical, resilience. There is no force or coercion here; the tamer channels inner strength to subdue and subtly control the lion.
I’ve been so love-drunk lately
making less sense as time goes by
but really not missing it
Because it's so much more honest to be absurd in the middle of the night
True things become strange
Strange things become clear
And anything could become prophecy so be fucking careful, but
Here I uncluttered some kinetic space
and found myself laying a golden key
gently on your tongue like a sacrament.
Such a dramatic way for my lustful little heart to make such a vividly charming point
about the freedom in your mouth
about storing something precious and powerful in the safest place
about rituals serving as the nexus of the things we feel and the things that make us feel.
And in the darkness and in the good kind of loneliness
I now realize I have spent years creating an opportunity that I never planned to share
before right now.
I’ve bonded with my fetish collars
Utterly showing off my reclaimed sense of self-possession to anyone who would dare to look
adoring myself in public
inverting expectations about ownership
in chains and locks too light and elegant for adequate restraint
but perfectly effective as reminders of whatever kind of love I choose to remember.
So after years of this ritual where I
brazenly flaunt my vulnerability
openly rejecting the shame of desiring myself in this conspicuous, lavish way
and falling slowly
deeply in love with myself
even on the most brutal days,
I leave no part of myself behind when I dissolve into the distance between bodies created by an airborne epidemic
and redefine what it is to want something
what it is to be close to someone
what it is to look forward
I rediscover the memory of holding your hand
of holding my breath
of giving you a gift
And I realize I’m holding one more key than I need
and you’re kneeling before me with your mouth open
waiting so patiently.
