moon song v
____
my heart was white in the sky
white and veiled
by the heavy clouds but it was
the moon and,
more importantly, your moon.
I shone for you and
veiled myself for you
lest the light would be too much for
one single night.
When dawn came
my heart watched over you then
took cover
in daylight.
You were too far from home -
I could not get you there.
But I could bleed
some light in your path
and so I did.
I pull my twin out of the moon
I pull my twin out of the moon
taking hold of her hair as I do.
She is blind and mute, knows neither taste nor smell.
We have been looking at each other
across the distance
every night.
She slips through the folds and cracks
and holes in the moon
into my atmosphere.
She breathes as if under water.
Behind her
the craters close.
“I have watched you always,”
my twin sister says.
“I have sent you the salt and
watched you bathe in it.”
I say,
“I cried.”
Drowned my face so
my tears could be
her tears.
My twin sees me not and smells me never.
We drift apart on this vast, dry earth.
As I am now
looking up at the moon,
I see a tear
in her fabric
where her hand has written my name.
I follow my sister across the planet.
We walk through deserts, cities,
across mountains
and to the shoreline, over and over again.
I smell her hair. I follow her steps in the sand.
She never turns and never waits for me.
I have seen her face
upon the moon
beneath the sea
and inside every beholding eye.
One night, she reaches up. She touches the moon.
She’s ready to go home.
I reach for her hair but
as I pull
she
leaves without it.
Adrift, we’re trying to hold on.