Mini-Pack: Narrative Non-Fiction by Emily M. Goldsmith

“Restoring the Balance� considers my experiences discovering the world as an adult after being repressed by evangelical Christianity for most of my life. In the years after I left the fundamentalist religion I grew up in and the Christian cult I was part of for six years, I embraced freedoms and experienced real joy for the first time. Finding love, discovering equitable partnership, enjoying desire, coming out and practicing paganism were all pathways to self-discovery and self-acceptance. By rejecting patriarchy and inequity in the church and a faith I no longer believed in, I was able to build a life I wanted, one that was previously denied to me.

CW: sexual assault (p. 7-8), purity culture, evangelical christianity, cults

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Restoring the Balance

by Emily M Goldsmith

May 1st arrives, and with it comes Spring flowers and a cool breeze. Kentucky is brisk in the Springtime. Birds bounce across our backyard picking at our vegetable garden and scatter when my dog, Niko runs out to join them. The green leaves of the large tree sitting in the parking lot, on our fence line, waft over our house as though his large arms are gathering us up into him. I wake up purposefully, feeling an energy I haven’t felt since February—before I went to a writer’s conference I shouldn’t have gone to, before I lost friends over a miscommunication, and before the United States isolation response to COVID-19.

I wake up and the cool air invigorates me. My husband and I drink our coffee on the back porch, sitting on a rickety bench my in-laws brought us when they visited last October. I light a candle and intend for my tarot cards to arrive in the mail today—days before the order tracking says they will arrive. I drive to the co-op in Lexington for vegetables, bulgur, vegan cheeses, fruit, jam, coffee, and candles. I choose a deep teal gratitude candle and a bundle of ethically sourced cedar. I wait in line, content and spaced out according to the instructions on the temporary sign they’ve constructed in the aisle. With my brown bags filled and the cashier enthusiastically thanked, I head home.

When I arrive back, I smile at the light blue chipped paint and obvious attention the outside of the house needs. I don’t mind the way it looks, to me it represents the passage of time and I wonder why people demand things to be beautiful when there’s so much beauty in practical use.

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Our home is 115 years old and the wood creaks as you move through it. My husband greets me and announces that a small package has come for me. I have a strange feeling, like intuition: I know that this package contains my tarot cards. I unpack the box before discarding the plastic and washing my hands thoroughly.

I set my new deck in the office and focus on preparing the kitchen for my Beltane meal plans.

First, I mix yeast and warm water with honey. Then, I turn on the oven. I lay out my vegetables for dinner: green cabbage, bell pepper, celery, onion, garlic, and large portobello mushrooms. I combine the yeast-water mixture with flour and more honey in the standing mixer until it rolls itself into a ball. I layer my palms with more flour and clap them together with a single pop. I knead my hands into the dough, pressing and pulling. I cover it and place it near the warmth of the oven.

At dinner time, we eat from a wooden board with my vegan charcuterie spread of grapes, jams, homemade honey bread, vegan cheese, crackers, and dried apricots. Our bowls gleam with a bed of vegetables and cabbage and portobello mushroom gravy. I have oatmeal cookies in the kitchen for dessert, my modern substitute for the traditional bannocks. Our table is sprinkled with lit white candles. My husband, Davy, lights the cedar after dinner and we walk through the house letting the smoke into every room slowly. We settle in and I open my tarot deck, first laying a simple diamond spread for Davy. He smiles and his gaze warms me, making me feel deep gratitude, and I feel affirmed in choosing the gratitude candle earlier at the co-op.

This is the second Sabbat we’ve celebrated this year, and each time I act on an impulse or pursue my intuition, I feel all the more confident I’m doing the right thing. I used to shutter, avert my Goldsmith 3

gaze, and walk quickly past the card readers in the French Quarter in New Orleans. I refused to step foot in a voodoo shop with my friends, heeding my mother’s warnings. I believed that doing something as simple as buying a 7-day candle would send me to hell, or worse—it would leave a demon attached to me, one that would be hard to shake. I stayed far away from anything “pagan” because everything pagan was witchcraft, and few things were more evil than witchcraft. This is the doctrine I was taught.

When I text my Mom to ask if we ever wrapped a Maypole in ribbon, a memory I possess, she responds with, “No! Too pagan.” My many Cajun ancestors were Catholic, the supposed reason they were removed from Acadia in The Great Expulsion of 1755 when the British separated families and shipped them off to various colonies. These ancestors of mine (those that survived) found their way to Louisiana where they became a multi-ethnic people. They were devout Catholics and they were mystics too. They lit candles, honored ancestors, visited graves on All Saints’ Day, some had family altars in their homes, some buried idols in their yard, or gathered metals to ward off evil spirits. My mom converted to Protestantism, an extra “F you” to her family: a father who had left her and a mother she resented.

We grew up non-denominational Christians which is to say we grew up Southern Baptist— without the name. My parents were involved with the church throughout my childhood. My mom was a Sunday school teacher and my father was a deacon. My grandfather was one of the men who founded the church in the ’70s. We attended Sunday service, bible studies, youth groups, etc. We went on family mission trips and I was taught the importance of prayer, devotion, respecting your parents, and purity from as long as I could remember.

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When I was in the seventh grade, my Sunday morning bible study before main service was titled “True Love Waits.” We heard the dangers of premarital sex in vague terms, promised to be chaste, and did all kinds of activities to secure these lessons in our memories. One such activity was where we passed around a white rose in a circle. At the end, the rose was no longer white but bruised and browned. Holding the wilting rose for everyone to see, our teacher asked us if the rose could be white again. We shook our heads. “That,” she said, “is what happens if you have premarital sex.”

Later that same year, I stood on a stage in a ceremony in the church sanctuary and pledged my virginity to God and my family. The girls all wore dresses past our knees, and my hair was twisted and tied with ribbon. We waited for our name to be called and climbed the steps to the grey carpeted stage, the same carpet and the same stage my parents were married on 26 years prior. Much like a Christian wedding, this occasion was marked with a ring, three small sapphires set in silver, and vows before God.

I attended private Christian school from kindergarten through high school graduation. Important lessons such as “don’t wear a skirt too short or you’ll cause your brother to stumble” were impressed upon us. I was often stopped in the hallway and told to kneel for a teacher to measure my shorts that we bought in the boy’s section of Academy Sports with a ruler she carried with her. We began our days with prayer in Homeroom, attended chapel service every Wednesday, and any discipline was always mixed with biblical instruction. Receiving these messages at home, church and school meant that no matter where I went, there was no respite.

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My mom woke up each morning at 5:00 a.m. to take her place in an armchair in the kitchen, coffee on a coaster, and her bibles and Christian books spread out around her. When we woke up each morning a few hours later, we would find her there—a permanent fixture, covered in her various texts. Although my mom was the primary disciplinarian, my dad never shied away from informing us that we had disappointed God with our behavior. He was known to occasionally ask, “Are you even a Christian?” after we had not cleaned our room or another similar offense.

Most of my recollections of my father from this time are of a specific stern look characterized by anger flickering behind his hazel eyes. My two older sisters seemed to do fine in this atmosphere.

Meggie, though outrageous and wild, performed her feminine Christianity well and with a bellowing laugh. Katie, the epitome of chastity, furrowed her brow as she examined the Lord’s teachings.

When Katie went off to college, she had God. What she found in Waco, Texas was God 2.0— Antioch Community Church. A church that believed in the full trinity and the power of the Holy Spirit. Believing in the Holy Spirit at Antioch was believing that this “part of God” is real, alive, and active. Katie said that she had witnessed signs and wonders. Katie said that she saw people be healed from physical and mental illness. “When the Holy Spirit was there, anything could happen,” she would say. There could be miracles, speaking in tongues, falling to the floor, people seeing visions or other such sensational occurrences.

I trusted my sister and looked up to her. I knew that what we had experienced as children was not the kind of religion I wanted to remain practicing— stale and oppressive. I was lonely, I was depressed in a family that didn’t believe in depression and I was confused.

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When Katie told me how to “pray away my depression,” I followed her lead. When she had me repent for masturbating and allowing “sexual sin into my life,” I did. I wept for how I had failed God and how deep I felt the shame of attempting to seek my own self-pleasure.

I was 16 when I first heard of Antioch Community Church and I didn’t leave until I was almost 23. Antioch set up over 50 locations across the U.S. and the world, most in the same city as a large university. They said that this was because young people “change the world.” I suppose this has more to do with how impressionable young people are. Like me, many were roped into Antioch by promises of equity, social justice, and making a better world for generations to come.

At the time, I did not know they were targeting college-aged students.

My freshman year of college, I moved from Baton Rouge to Chicago. During my time in Chicago, I tried to behave like my sister Katie. I spent time with God by reading my bible in the morning and praying and traveled three hours each way to the nearest Antioch Community Church location by train each Sunday. I remember the exhaustion of traveling so far on the Amtrak in Illinois, immediately arriving home after, and falling into my bed for a long nap. Even though I had class at 8 a.m. on Monday morning, I remember reassuring myself that I was doing the right thing. I still managed to make good grades. Even though I was complicating my life, I told myself this was God’s grace.

When I went home to Baton Rouge for Christmas break, my high school friend died. Although he had cancer, we all thought he was recovering. His death was something I was not equipped to

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process. We had been trained not to question, to believe God was sovereign and we couldn’t understand his ways, and to pray when we felt otherwise.

I stopped going to church for a few months after his funeral. During that time, Katie was encouraging me to go. Instead of going to church, I decided to go on a handful of dates with a guy named Luke. I thought this could make me feel a little better.

On our fourth and last date, Luke invited me over to his apartment. It was March, in Chicago. It had recently snowed and there were soft piles of white outside the window. I walked in wearing Winter clothes: boots, socks, tights, a scarf, cardigan, and a beanie. I didn’t know what to expect.

As a pure, Godly woman, I was not prepared for physical intimacy beyond handholding and a quick peck on the lips. Luke tried to go as far as he could. On our second date, he asked me if I was a virgin. My cheeks flushed and I didn’t know what to say. Of course I was, I thought. He displayed a toothy grin in response, “I can work with that,” he responded. Looking back on it now, I think he saw it as a challenge.

At first, when we were kissing, I felt rebellious and excited. I felt guilty. I knew that if I told my sister, she would be disappointed, but it felt good to do something wrong. Luke didn’t care about my experience; however, he didn’t seem to hear when I told him to move or stop. Rather quickly, the flutter of excitement in my chest turned to fear.

He had stripped most of my clothes off except for my underwear and the black flowered sundress I was wearing. We were on the floor of his living room. His body on top of mine, pinning me

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down. I kept moving his hands only for him to move them back: fingers digging into my butt, sliding roughly between my legs, clawing at my boobs. I could tell he wasn’t done, and I knew I had to get out of his room.

I was able to leverage my weight and twist to push him off enough that he paused. I took the moment of pause to spring up from the dull tan carpet, grab my clothes strewn across the room at lightning speed, and rush out from the apartment. In the hallway, as he stood in the door with a strange look on his face, I told him I had Spanish homework due at midnight.

I didn’t know how to describe what happened. I knew it made me uncomfortable. When I called my sister to talk to her about it, I just said, “I made out with someone.” Katie responded with great concern. She suggested that I wasn’t thriving in Chicago because I didn’t have Christian friends. Even though I was doing my best, and I had been traveling to Antioch most of the year, she said that I was “letting Satan tempt me to sin and do things that were not honoring God.” She said that I should pray about transferring back to LSU where I would have my family, and I could attend the Antioch church location in Baton Rouge full-time.

I knew I felt weird and bad. I was always told that any sexual activity, including kissing, should be reserved for marriage. I was told that, outside of marriage, sex would feel awful and you would feel used and disgusting. “Guys only want one thing,” and so on. I did feel used and I felt gross. I believed that Katie was right: I wasn’t living a Godly life. I believed that I had experienced what happens to you when you live outside of God’s will for your life. That night, I applied to LSU. As I filled in the blanks of the online application, I thought about what happened

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with Luke. I decided to put it out of my head. I had no idea that what happened with Luke, or some variation of it, would happen eight more times before I turned 21.

When I finally learned to call what happened to me ‘sexual assault’, or ‘rape’, I was beside myself. I had been conditioned to believe that sex was for marriage, and really for procreation.

Female pleasure was underemphasized. In the church I grew up in, we read a book that told us women didn’t enjoy sex. Antioch, which tried to market itself as a progressive community, took a more liberal stance. Although masturbation, even in the context of marriage was forbidden, women could enjoy sex through the holiness of the union and God’s blessing. I learned through my friends who were getting married at 21, and 22 years old that this wasn’t always the case.

Many of them were afraid of sex, they experienced pain during sex, it wasn’t enjoyable, or they just couldn’t figure out the mechanics of it. Their husbands were doing just fine, however.

During those years, Antioch controlled who I dated, and to some degree, who I was friends with.

Mostly, I was friends with other people at Antioch. I could’ve dated a non-Antioch member but only if he was a Christian, and even then, they advised us not to. It would be too complicated, they said, because a married couple should attend the same church which means one of the people must leave their community. My few non-Antioch friends were from my classes at LSU or people I’d met by going to shows in town. My leaders and peers in the Antioch college ministry frequently commented on how many non-Christian friends I had—not directly condemning it but making sure I knew how unusual it was.

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“Wow,” they would say, “It’s so amazing that you’re able to have real friendships with nonChristians. What a ministry!” I always felt like this was ridiculous. I had friends because they were my friends, not because I wanted to convert them.

These strange interactions should’ve been a red flag. Unfortunately, I didn’t even know to look for red flags. When I was 21 years old, my sister Katie was a pastor at Antioch and my parents had both joined as well. I had been living life as an Antioch-er for five years already, dedicating myself to the practices. My family was there, most of my friends were there, and I saw what happened when people left—they were cut off and forgotten. I thought that would happen to me too.

I toyed with the idea of leaving. Each summer between semesters, Antioch prepared us for a lull in our relationship with God. They said that the devil was looking to bring us down and being away from our community and accountability was always hard. They would have us fill out worksheets in our lifegroups (a fancy name for bible study) to plan out how we were going to combat Satan’s plans to destroy us during our summer break.

Each summer, I fell into a “God’s not real” spiral. I look back on my journal entries from college summers and so many of them were dated before or after an Antioch mission trip where I’m writing out all the reasons God can’t be real and why I don’t want to follow him even if he is. I kept these musings to myself, knowing what could happen if I shared them with others.

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It was obvious that I didn’t fit in at Antioch, especially in the college ministry. While the girls in the college ministry mostly had wavy blonde hair and wore Free People clothes—loose-fitting tunics with skinny jeans, I dyed my hair all colors of the rainbow. I wore ripped tights, patterned skirts, crop tops, and combat boots. I let my armpit hair grow, and started dying it to match my hair color, something several Antioch boys were sure to point out. I was encouraged to be a Christian artist when so many artists weren’t Christian and to be “light in the darkness.”

While Antioch was mining me for free labor: spoken word poems, writing copy, and sitting in or planning meetings for college services, I was being reminded by my peers of my differences and inferiorities. All the while, I had been strong-armed into downloading software on my computer called Covenant Eyes to keep me from looking up anything “unholy” like erotica, porn, or even strolling Tumblr for “girl kissing girl.”

Things started to break down for me beyond repair in the Summer of 2016. I woke up one morning in June to a Twitter feed full of tragedy, heartbreak, loss, fear, and despair. The day was June 12th, when 49 people died and 53 were wounded during a shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. I was heartbroken. I didn’t feel like going to church but I had invited a friend and so I slowly dressed in whatever I wanted to wear and then added a loose, big, flowy sweater, sure that none of my features were accentuated and I drove myself to church.

That morning during announcements, the pastor instructed us to pray for the nation—a nation that was “succumbing to temptation and evil.” He encouraged us to take a “hard stance” when it came to our opinion and opposition of both same-sex marriages and allowing transgender folks

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into public bathrooms. I was flabbergasted for multiple reasons. I didn’t feel like this announcement was appropriate at any time. But, today of all days? Had no one on the staff opened the news or social media?

I later found out from my sister that staff members were encouraged not to look at their phones before church. This specific announcement had been scheduled weeks before and commanded by Jimmy Seibert, the founder and head pastor of the Antioch Movement. Jimmy Seibert wrote a book called “Passion and Purpose,” it was mandatory reading for all of us in leadership. What Jimmy said, everyone did.

This was the beginning of the end for me. I was already struggling to reconcile my political beliefs, social beliefs, and personal interests with the Antioch lifestyle. I wouldn’t come out as bisexual, to myself even, for years to come. Antioch did not allow you to live half-in, you were all in and dedicated or you were out. Every aspect of your life was impacted by Antioch: what you wore, where you worked, where you went, who your friends were, what music you listened to, what news you consumed, how you processed politics, etc. They didn’t even let me study abroad for a semester when I wanted to. It was all top-down.

I tried to hang on for the sake of my family, and I feared what would happen to me outside the world I had lived in for my adult years so far. I was always told that living outside God’s will would bring only pain and suffering. I was told that dating a non-Christian and participating in premarital sex would bring heartbreak and that your partner would eventually leave you. I was told that I couldn’t succeed without Jesus.

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It was the foundation of our beliefs: “without Jesus, you are nothing.” I had been trained since I was old enough to walk not to trust my thoughts. My thoughts were deceptive, but God’s thoughts were higher than mine and there was no way I could know them (Isaiah 55:9). I could do nothing without Jesus. I was nothing without Jesus (John 15:5). With God, however, I could do all things through “Christ who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). Almost everyone in my life had deliberately set me up to fail without the safety net of Christianity and the church.

That Fall, I threw myself into work running a music venue and working at the Arts Council in Baton Rouge. I also enrolled in the Antioch Discipleship school: my last-ditch effort to give it everything before I walked away. The discipleship school was an intense program with little flexibility, and it was run by the most problematic staff member at Antioch. His name was Donny and he was arrogant, his sense of humor could only be described as rude, and he had no respect for intellect, education, or curiosity. His unearned overconfidence only emphasized his underdeveloped sentiments about life with Jesus and his bad jokes about women in the kitchen.

The discipleship program was nine months long including a Fall and a Spring semester. I only lasted the Fall. Between June of 2016 and December of the same year, a variety of things occurred. It began with the poorly timed announcement featuring our church’s beliefs about LGBT rights from the main stage. In July, Alton Sterling was murdered by two police officers in Baton Rouge, and Antioch did nothing and said nothing. I went to the protests alone. When three police officers died a few weeks later, Antioch was quick to speak up and pray for their families and the city.

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In August, right before my discipleship school semester began, Antioch got national attention when the public discovered that the couple from HGTV’s Fixer Upper, Chip and Joanna Gaines, went to a church that was pro-conversion therapy crusaded by the lead pastor, Jimmy Seibert.

This church, of course, was the Antioch location in Waco. I had learned what Antioch thought about LGBT folks—they thought that no one was gay, or a lesbian, or bisexual, etc. They believed that Satan was “just deceiving people.” Taking it a step further, they believed that if you “thought you were gay,” you could become “not gay.” As a lifegroup leader in the college ministry, I had been occasionally told of this stance, but they never placed much emphasis on it for us, at least at the Baton Rouge location. As a closeted bisexual and someone who leaned more progressive in their views, I thought it was somewhat negotiable and certainly didn’t teach it in my lifegroup.

Only after reading this article and having conversations in the months that followed with my sister did I realize the nuances of their stance. Although Antioch never admitted directly to promoting conversion therapy, I see how what they taught us contributed to this rhetoric. I also understand that what Jimmy was teaching in Waco wasn’t necessarily what I was hearing but it was representative of what Antioch believed, nonetheless.

We were actively encouraged never to question. They instead encouraged us to embrace a variation of the “love the sinner, hate the sin” rhetoric wherein an LGBT+ person could join Antioch and be loved and accepted if they knew acting on their homosexuality was totally inappropriate and wouldn’t be tolerated. This never sat well with me. Despite what they were

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teaching us, and what my sister believed, I determined to silently embody a more open view. If God loves everyone and created everyone, I thought, then why couldn’t he have made people gay or trans?

In the words of Jimmy Seibert himself responding to the backlash after these articles posted, "We are not only not anti-gay, but we are pro-helping people in their journey to find out who God is and who He has made them to be.” This convoluted language was intentional. If you listen to Jimmy’s sermon following the Supreme Court ruling same-sex marriage as a constitutional right, Antioch’s opinions are unmistakably clear. Up until this point, I had never heard these specific sentiments expressed in this way. I sat and listened to the sermon after reading the Buzzfeed article and I cried.

That November, Trump was elected president. During my later college years, I had been experiencing the unfortunate truth that although Antioch marketed itself as equitable and social justice-centric, they under-delivered. If 75% of White Evangelicals in the U.S. voted for Trump, Antioch was reflective of their denomination. People gladly admitted they voted for Trump—I was shocked. I remember the woman who mentored me, a young mother, assuring me of the merit in voting for Trump. The same woman also reacted with unfiltered anger toward me when I told her I had gotten drunk. She later half-apologized for her reaction in the same sentence she told me that salvation wasn’t permanent, and I was on the path to losing mine.

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While the city of Baton Rouge was erupting with tension and the hot humid air was so thick it was like walking through bricks, I was learning that what I believed in for so many years was probably bullshit.

Amidst all of this, one good thing was happening. I had started secretly (and unofficially) dating a generous, kind-hearted, curious, and gentle person. He wasn’t a Christian and didn’t fully understand why I couldn’t just walk away if I didn’t want to be there. I had been friends with Davy for a little over a year at this point and respected him deeply—having watched him extend kindness, involve himself in the music/art community, and be friends or date other people. He stuck with me, despite the complication, and supported my decisions as I navigated an exit plan from the church.

I slowly withdrew from my volunteer positions at Antioch and then I officially dropped out of the discipleship school at Christmas break. I didn’t think I would be able to leave the church when I left the school program. I was contemplating how I would leave for good when a stroke of good fortune hit. Anyone who grew up in churches or around them knows that a lead pastor carries the church. When pastors retire and new ones replace them, it is a delicate and diplomatic exchange of titles. What happened at Antioch was far from delicate: Donny became head pastor suddenly and it was announced that the former head pastor was moving back to Texas abruptly.

Many people didn’t like or respect Donny and I wasn’t the only person who left. I took the announcement as my golden opportunity. I texted everyone to let them know that I was going to find a new church after this announcement, knowing full well I was not going to another church.

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course, my parents and friends thought I would immediately find a new church. They were surprised when I started dating someone only two weeks after I left, even more surprised when that someone wasn’t a Christian.

It didn’t take long before I lost almost every friend I had from Antioch. My family didn’t abandon me, as I had feared, although they did frequently vocalize their displeasure.

Surprisingly, I didn’t care. I was finally free, and I never felt more like myself. The first week after I left, I found a trauma therapist and finally jumped into processing and healing from the repeated sexual assaults I endured during my college years and the PTSD that followed.

Antioch’s response to me vocalizing my trauma when I was there was to tell me to “go to God.” In one woman’s case, I was even made to repent for being raped “just in case.”

It took me years to heal and to move on. I stayed away from anything remotely religious or spiritual until recently, when I decided to observe pagan holidays, as people did for thousands of years. Throughout my exit from Antioch and the years that followed, I had the support of the most wonderful partner who became my husband. We got married at an entirely non-religious ceremony in an event hall on a perfect spring day. The air was soft and vibrant.

Sometimes I lay awake at night and feel fear all over again. I feel fear that Satan could be real or that an afterlife where I’ll be subjected to eternal flames is waiting for me. For the first few months after I left, I expected lightning to strike me down at any moment. It didn’t. I make myself shake these thoughts away from my mind and clear the threshold. Years have passed and each day provides more lived experience that what I grew up believing simply wasn’t true. When

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I bought a vibrator for the first time, I felt so risqué. I experienced a rush of adrenaline as I unwrapped it and a shiver up my spine. I didn’t know what I was expecting to happen, maybe God to spite me or for something to fall on me and crush me as I set aside the colorful packaging. Of course, nothing happened.

Every time I buy revealing clothing, walk into an occult store, or watch an R-rated film, it still feels thrilling—like what most people probably feel when they’re a teenager. I’m glad I get to experience these small exhilarations. When I came out as bisexual, I felt that same post-religious tension, the is-something-gonna-happen leftover fear from my fundamentalist days. The only major result of coming out was that I felt deeply at peace with myself. I stopped living my life on the foundation of fear.

From birth until I graduated college, I was fed lies about myself, the world around me, and the people in the world. I lost my belief that people can be good, one I’ve since regained. I had no agency over my own body and no knowledge of my options. I was restricted from experiencing so many wonderful things. I now cherish my individuality and the ability to do things just for fun, or just because I want to. I wasn’t allowed to question or think for myself. I now relish all my questions and choices.

...

The blue gratitude candle burns in my dining room smelling of rosemary and lavender as the smoke spirals up. I shuffle my tarot deck and lay each card down slowly, a flurry of purple and

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white. I pull Temperance and see their sideways glance, their hair cascading over their shoulders and the two cups in their hands. As I lay the Major Arcana card on the old wood table and take a deep breath, I feel the balance being restored to me.

Emily M. Goldsmith

Emily M. Goldsmith (she/her) is a Cajun queer poet originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Kentucky. Her work has appeared in Vagabond City, Fine Print, Entropy, and elsewhere.

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