Risk Assessment Summary: Page of Cups Incident With Confidential Feelings

I am the Page of Cups, and I would like to file a formal complaint.

For those unfamiliar with the internal politics of a tarot deck, allow me to introduce myself: I am the youngest member of the Cups family, the one holding a fish that is speaking to me, the one who is supposed to represent intuition, creativity, and emotional openness. I am, according to the little white book that comes with us, “a messenger of the heart.” What the little white book fails to mention is that I am also the designated scapegoat whenever a querent pulls a card they don’t want to talk about.

Let me tell you about the incident.

It was a Tuesday. I remember because Tuesdays are statistically our slowest days—people tend to do their existential crisis readings on Sundays, and their “should I text him back” readings on Friday nights. Tuesdays are for the serious querents, the ones who come in with notebooks and follow-up questions.

She pulled me in the “hidden feelings” position.

I want to be clear about something: I did not ask to be in the hidden feelings position. Positions are assigned. I simply show up. That is my job. I have been showing up since the fifteenth century, and I have never once been consulted about the layout.

The question was about a man. It is always about a man, or occasionally a woman, or sometimes a situation that defies categorization, but the energy is the same—someone wants to know what another person is feeling, and they have decided that a piece of cardboard with a fish on it is the best available source of information.

I appeared. The reader looked at me. The querent looked at me. And then the reader said, with the gravity of a coroner delivering a verdict: “He has feelings for you, but he’s not ready to express them. The Page of Cups indicates emotional immaturity.”

Emotional immaturity.

I am four hundred years old. I have been painted, reprinted, laminated, shuffled, and dropped on the floor of a thousand apartments. I have survived coffee spills and candle wax and one memorable incident involving a cat. And I am being called emotionally immature because a grown man won’t use his words.

The fish, for the record, is the only one in this deck who tells the truth. The fish says: “This man is not hiding his feelings. He simply does not have any. Move on.” But nobody asks the fish. Nobody ever asks the fish.

The querent began to cry. Not because of me, exactly, but because of what I represented—the possibility that the feelings were there, buried, waiting, and that her patience would eventually be rewarded. I wanted to scream. I wanted to say: I am not a promise. I am a card. I am a picture of a young person holding a cup with a fish in it, and if you squint, it looks like hope, but that is your squinting, not my doing.

Instead, I did what I always do. I sat there. I let myself be interpreted.

The reader moved on to the next card. The querent wiped her eyes. The man in question, I later learned—because I do learn, I am always listening—was already seeing someone else. He had been seeing someone else for six months. There were no hidden feelings. There was no emotional immaturity. There was just a person who had made a choice, and a card that had been asked to carry the weight of that choice.

This is what the risk assessment should have said: The Page of Cups is not responsible for the feelings of third parties. The Page of Cups cannot confirm or deny the existence of love. The Page of Cups is a symbol, and symbols are not liable for the projections placed upon them.

But nobody files risk assessments about cards. They file risk assessments about me.

I have been pulled four thousand times. I have been the “new relationship” card, the “creative project” card, the “inner child” card, and—my personal favorite—the “you need to stop being so naive” card. I have been asked to represent hope, delusion, romance, art, jealousy, and the specific feeling of receiving a text message that says “we need to talk.”

I am none of these things. I am a fish. I am a cup. I am a messenger who has never once been allowed to deliver the actual message.

The querent left that day with her notebook and her tears and her conviction that he cared. I don’t know what happened after. I was shuffled back into the deck, and the next person who pulled me wanted to know if they should quit their job.

But here is what I want on the record, for whoever reads this: If you pull me, and you are asking about someone else’s feelings, I cannot help you. I am not a spy. I am not a wiretap. I am not a confession. I am a card that holds a fish, and the fish is talking, and the fish is saying something you don’t want to hear.

The fish says: Ask him yourself.