I carried the king of hearts around with me from when I was twelve until I was thirty.  It was in the flip-up portrait part of my wallet, where my driver’s license should have been I guess.  I was twelve when my mother took me to the store and I bought that wallet, so there wasn’t a driver’s license to put in.  And at thirty I bought a new one, one not made of leather, because I was attempting to learn how to be gentle and so it felt strange to carry my money and credit cards and whatnot around in a billfold made from skin.

So what’s wrong with a twelve year old kid who puts the king of hearts in his wallet in the first place?  From a cheap and obviously then-unusable deck of cards, if I remember correctly.  What’s wrong with the sixteen year old who keeps carrying it, or the twenty-five year old, or whomever?  Hard to say.  But maybe I should feel glad that I’m not carrying it anymore.  As though at eighteen years that part of me up and emancipated itself, went away.  Goodbye, suicide.  Although we may miss you in this place.