The Woman Said This Would Happen

Last year, something strange happened to me.

I met a woman at a writing conference after giving a poetry lecture and she asked me if I wanted to have my cards read. In fact, now that I think about it, it wasn’t so much as her asking me, but rather her telling me that I needed to sit down and have a session with her. Most people that know me, know that I believe in fate, that I believe in love, that I believe that everything happens for a reason. I think that people are put in our lives for specific reasons and that we take something from each and every encounter we have with them. So when this opportunity presented itself, I didn’t think twice about it. I sat down in an empty room with her and she read my cards, detailing the next year of my life.

She told me some things that I laughed at, things that I never thought I’d have a fighting chance with, and then she told me some things that immediately made my heart fall, that took my breath away. It was one of the first times in my life that I was truly speechless, and I remember sitting there, staring at the cards in utter shock, disbelief and awe.

 

I was skeptical until certain things started happening, until situations began to present themselves. The stack of coincidences was getting too high for me to ignore what was being put right in front of my face. 

And now I’m coming up on that year mark and the more I think about those predictions, about what the universe has already put in motion, how it’s broken me, how it’s blessed me, I’m wondering how this is all going to play out. A year ago, I was a completely different person; someone that even now, looking back, I don’t even recognize. This past year has taught me more about living than any other time in my life, and if that woman is right, if the words she said to me when I left that room prove true, then these next couple of months are going to be very interesting for me.

Now, like I said, I believe in fate, but I also believe that we can create our own destiny. So change is in the air for me--that much I know is true--but the more I think about it, the more I think that that air is starting to smell like chicory coffee and voodoo, that those nights are beginning to feel a lot like magic. And if I'm the one looking into my future, I'm seeing nights spent writing at Lafitte's Blacksmith Bar, mornings spent on the Mississippi River listening to Jazz.

 

Oh, and a new book.

Ah, yes. A beautiful, crazy, horrific, new book.