A Moon That Waxes and Wanes
Home has become a battlefield. The washing machine swirls and slams clothes in its silver belly like bullets: the clang of belt buckles and the thump thump thump thump beats in the back room like a seizure. I never thought home would be a place of stagnant smoke. Trapped inside all day like an animal, trapped inside inside like a growling feral beast hunkered over wounds in a dark cave. Like the cave, I am dark and cold and quiet inside. I need to learn myself, lean into my ears and listen because I do not know who I am anymore.
I do know I love a moon that waxes and wanes.
I fear I’ll lose sight of this glow, all because I bathed in my own anger for years at dawn. Anger pours from large lilac glass vases filled with nighttime fevers. Pours down red javelins like sermons. Tremors boil my blood into volcanoes.
I do not know how to handle my anger and neither does the moon.
The stars don’t know what to do to me. So I howl and howl and cry at them, beg for the ache to stop. Even when I’m around people I am lonely. And then when I’m by myself, my own validations haunt me, leave me bereft with empty projects and promises, a voicemail machine stuffed with lost letters, a missing pair of dirty white converse lacking conversation slumps by the back door. I feel overwhelmed by even cooking myself dinner, slicing up rabbit fat, smelling it sizzle on the stove. So I’ve made friends with icicles, gotten colder and stiffer until the body you hold in bed is now a cold corpse. I do and do not feel patience with myself any more.
And the last time we fought the moon was full.
Our words tumble out our mouths like angry fountains: flash floods flame from our tongues, canines spill over and fill the car with the roar of hurricanes. The rearview mirror is torn to pieces. Glass shatters shining opulence. Our eyes strike down on each other like lightening, burn ash into cinder. Our hands slam at the windshield, desperate fingers dig for a way out: sand cuts our eyes open into tiny shells. Abalone decorates your cheekbone.
I denied love to you and pushed your warm hands away. Now, reckless, I am dehydrated and thirsty for your gaze.
The last time we sought each other, was the moon full?
