Fortune Cookie

for thirty three years
she had folded cookies,
slipping slivers of fortune
into their sweet pockets,
now she sighed,
folded her apron for the last time,
one of those cookies had her phone number,
a parting gift,
a shop floor prank,
maybe even destiny had
a brittle sense of humour;

months later,
she met her,
the lady who called,
an elder in a battered cape,
beads and pigeon feathers in her hair,
two headed snakes in twisted silver
wound around her fingers,
strange chants wafting through
clouds of burning jasmine sticks;

you are a lover of words, she said,
her eyes closed against the world,
they open the spaces between their letters
and show you the peacock winged light,
in a spindrift of micro butterfly wings
they sing to you of secrets they hide,
for seven lifetimes
they have leapt off your fingers,
on to parchment and dried palm leaves,
open your notebook, pick up your quill,
providence waits on that empty sheet;

she walked slowly along the river,
its sun painted ripples mocking her streaming eyes,
the broken walls of her old school house
rising grimy and unpainted around her head,
maybe if the bombs hadn’t fallen that night,
maybe if her father had left that night,
maybe if she had learnt how to read,
the cookies would have
opened their secrets to her,
it is what it is, she sighed.
a strip of paper. a moment. a life.
kismet.

For Dverse Poets where my fortune cookie says “You are a lover of words”