“Venus in the sixth house rules your chart.
House of Illness. House of Labor. House of Small Animals.
Where Mars rejoices. Mala Fortuna.” The Château de Malmaison
comes to mind. Joséphine, divorced from Napoleon,
ordered her estate decorated in a neoclassical style,
martial and controlled unlike his brain and gut,
those thrones of lust. Red velvet chairs with gold legs
she chose for her bedroom, an empress’s war tent.
Like my Venus in her house of misfortune,
I prefer lamps to overhead fluorescent lights
and grow fiddle-leaf figs in large stone pots.
I am called laughter-loving or the Black One.
I am hardy and resistant to privations—the stars
still shine—replacing one longing for another.