In what looks like an old village courtyard, a taller child hands a smaller one a cup filled with white flowers. All six cups around them hold the same flowers. Behind them, another figure walks away with his back turned.
The Six of Cups is the kinder past. A time when you gave and took without keeping score, when handing someone a flower was enough. When it turns up, someone you have not heard from in years might get in touch, you might find yourself near your hometown, or you might dig out something you loved as a child. Small kindnesses in the present belong here too — the favour done with no strings that stays with you longer than you expected.
Reversed, you have stayed in the past too long. It all looks good from here, but memory polishes more than you think. You keep thinking of an ex and fail to notice anyone new, or you insist on the way things used to work and stall. Occasionally it reads the opposite way: the past cut off so hastily that someone who mattered got cut off with it.
Worth asking: is it that person you miss, or who you were back then?
Reading it only as 'an old flame returns' is too narrow. The card is less about a particular person than about a way of giving without counting. Even if someone from back then does return, whether it feels that kind again is up to the two people you are now.
With the Two of Cups, an old connection really does pick back up. Overlapping with the Eight of Cups, it leans the other way — this time you pack up the memories and go.