The Key in the Lion's Mouth

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.