King of Thieves || Cartomancy (brother-poem)

CW: addiction, death

“Is it possible to die before the body is ready?” - Emily Kramer (June 18, 2025 JCW Plums Workshop)

---

Your name means man of chance,

or, man of luck; 

(where do we find ourselves when we

run out of luck?)

In cartomancy, the King of Hearts is 

honest, and kind-hearted.

He is a good man

The book I am reading

says the King of Hearts is hasty in

his actions. his words. Done in

insufficient consideration.

I find your honesty

(insufficient consideration)

to be unfair. You are gentle

and fire. Oh how you burn. 

You ignite your own air. 

Ignite your own life.

(burn to a dead star.)

Curse our lonely hearts;

I can not watch you  dethrone yourself.

I cannot bare the charred remains of

who you were before I knew you.

I cannot bare this goodbye.

This is regicide.

Can I breathe

without you?

(I am drowning without you)

I grit my teeth. tattoo

my heart. Bare our life in my palms.

The book says the Jack of Hearts is

committed. Sincere. Might I

be committed without you? I find myself

poor in your absence. Find myself to 

be a good bad luck psalm. 

Find myself to be godless. Starved.

The broken coeur of a nightmare.

I do not know how to feed myself 

in your absence. My tattoos,

etchings into my weary bones. I grew

up to find myself alone. Starving. 

and I cannot

find my way out 

of this gas station. When

are you coming out of the crumbling ant-

hill? I cannot find you by scent. 

Can't smother you. 

Can't hold you, broken glass, in my palm;

You are too addict calm, brother.

I do not know how to beat the stats where

neither of us can make it out alive.

I can only hope on the stars that there

is a pathway where we both can arrive

in a Heaven uncontested. Without

pain or history or bloody knuckles.

300 people die from overdose

in the US every day. You are all

but one of those deaths. One mark of all those

bodies hiding in a gas station and

praying for the moment of silence. A

moment where the world isn't shit. 

Do you ever tire of the smokin'?

You and I aren't so different; we're both mutts.

We are both alone, clutching our guts,

too scarred to walk home by ourselves.

We cannot make it alone in the ruts

of the world. We are starving. I, he, delves

into what should could would have been for our

fuckhood of a life. What good are memories

when they eat us alive? Chime the hour

where for once we aren't alone. Arteries

of our body cry out for peace and peirce

the guts of who we were meant to be when

we were raised right. Raised wrong or raise our ears

to melody of what we're meant to then.

We are too whole, to whisper, to birdcall.

We are too broken, to crawl home, to fall

into our mother's lap like we are the

kids we used to be. She's tired now; all

the years we fought caught up to us. To be

a child and kiss the sky again. Love

the clouds, the stars, the planes. I miss who we

used to be. When the world was kinder.

I cannot fly with you anymore. See,

the drugs caught up to you. And the war me.

Had to fight my own angels, fight my own

fireflies. I can't bear you, my ash tree.

my summertime ice-cream. my blue sky zone.

I cannot bear the tides to watch you die.

We have become statistics. 

You and I

are hopelessly alone in this quick flight.

Flying, falling, crashing. The blue blue sky

opens and devours us whole. The fight

was momentary. was sedentary.

Stood no chance against God. against Nature

Nurture. The father-pilled dysentery

We died. Road rash rope rash kills our fathers

and we follow in their paths. snorting the

ash of the tires. We are statistics.

When 38 to 40 fucking die

and are shamed for it its not slaughter if

its fucking epidemic. 

Marketed to be an easy kill. Low

risk by design. Easy death. I was raised and

you were left to raise yourself and I, I

was left to raise myself and we're not sand

molded to make colored glass we're just man

left to make the worst of ourselves by God.

I can't, I cannot blame this on God's plan.

We had choices. We had paths. We had sod

all to fucking do and we picked to die.

We picked cartomancy and lost the cards

in the ocean in the clouds 

King of Hearts to Jack of Hearts: 

idealized leader to blind devotion.

to blind gold mutterings of a scarce God

What are we, if not broken fuckin sin?

leaders and followers and fuckin odd

bits of tweed. strands of rope. red rope to show

where destiny failed us. What are we if

not puppets tied to each other. We blow

and huff and shove each other off the cliff

but we forget that we are tied. anchored.

Drifting off and screaming we are there, doomed

to fall and fail and never fly.

Eve

never had a brother, if she did, I

think she'd never have eaten that apple.

There's too much to leave behind. Blood and bones

and skin and teeth. There's too much to grapple

with. Too many stars. Too many unknowns.

I am doomed to follow, you're doomed to lead;

to break, to break; to hold and not let go,

to be held and let go. to run, to cede;

to foster, to seethe. To know it was so

long ago, to bite anyways. to cry,

to hold your brother while he sobs. To anger,

to understand. Understand, anger. Why?

Why do we cycle this game? To stagger

home at 3 in the morning. Wondering.

is there anything to do but lose? Win?

Can we win? Even if we're stuttering?

Can we breathe? Love? Even if we're on thin

ice? Will we seethe? I don't want to believe

I am doomed to chase and you are 

doomed to leave in every iteration of us. I

wonder how long we make it next time.