“Consider your own setting foot
in the heart’s desire:
you might not be this happy again.
Look at it this way,
as if it were real,
as if you were singing to the household saint
who grew tired of waiting and sang to himself
til the whole house was certain
and singing again.”
From The Inspector of Miracles in a “Life Without Speaking” by Mary Reufle
I am protected.
I am wet and giant
and shaking from the
waves.
I am the midnight ocean
birthed from the absent sun
taken over by the
full moon’s rage.
I am an alarm.
a storm brims the coast
and you start writing down
anything you remember
about me.
I am undulating in great
tidal gasps; a siren
sights set on horizon,
humming low, humming
softly and
come in closer
splayed across the break.
your arid soul is thirsty for the
new oasis I’ve become
but your obtrusive leaps
are doused in hex
before they ever reach me.
you are responsible for
some of this and
I am responsible for
that.
my bed is soaked
and I am angry.
black in vengeance cloaks
in white to walk the streets
the way furtive angels might.
you send me butterflies
at night
to assuage me.
I return the offer:
I dress in wings,
suck the nectar from the
dusk’s flowers,
learn her tales,
twist into my final form:
a long nightmare,
black hairy legs and
two tagmata,
one long dry choke
at the stroke of
3:33 every
morning onward.
you spend the year immured
in poetry and pieces
of half finished themes
obsessing over everything
you turn to see.
over everything you thought you
saw out of your
unrelenting periphery,
how many twins do I own?
thought you
dreamed and wrote
down, unwind,
which moon did I come out of
and how many wolves
did I set free last night?
I become immune.
you become the
stranded calf in
my forest while
I spend the year
immersed in baths of
black obsidian and
forgetting what it
ever meant to
me.
“reversing” or “us”
round, tight ass and
bright, blue eyeliner.
permanent ink stain on
left hand with a note
or symbol
or something of former
value, a reminder to her
and she is
brutally apathetic to any
male presence
of any kind.
postures.
she asked for the time and
is currently walking
away from me to
ask directions from
someone else.
she asked for the time
and turned around once more
to smile
before she asked him.
“how guys save me in their phone”
build your empire
watch it burn
and then discover
you are made of flesh too.
the anniversary of my brother’s death was yesterday and I wrote this years ago. I miss him every day.
I should walk out
big as Venus,
arms uncrossed,
if I was ever honest.
my arms are wrapped
in a purple peacoat and
my hair is curled with an iron to
add ebullience to errands.
suddenly gather every strand with
self importance in
tiny felt bundles.
that week I had even painted my nails a
bright color; a conversation starter,
but I’m
truly as vapid as possible.
remain as sunny as possible.
insipid and careful,
rip it all out later
privately
as if beauty even matters
when I’m on the floor in tangles
trying to untangle
words I can’t commit to;
making the motions of crying stopping
to cough politely
to no one in the room.
I listen to AM radio today:
grasp the magnitude of crooners’ legacies,
of death reverberating against each window,
understand how most lives are wasted shirking
the embarrassment of a simple
I love you
when we could have said nothing,
just hugged more or looked at
each other. .
but I put distance between myself
and those I run to.
i’ve been dying drying to drown
myself again
in three consecutive hours of
smuggled moonshine and
a quick spin around the block,
no seatbelt,
knees up and the airbag on
climbing that ladder to the sun,
project my inner warmth all over pedestrians
in middling dust
and they’ll say
oo I feel like I was gently touched.
or locked in a necklace that bruises my clavicle when
I’m not careful
and I suddenly have to
run from it all.
I want to be fetal in silver and sapphire
grabbing his charred pinky to hold on,
hugging his hard heart and I still can’t call home
with any urgency and there are
people always seeking me.
storm clouds form on the side-view,
settle and condense.
the glass is dotted with a thousand tiny reflections
of survivor’s guilt
anthropomorphized.
this decade feels like elastic chaos,
one overwrought vignette that stretches
continentally and I can’t
get a break and the light rain
from a gray cloud
can’t flood this whole thing.
did God intend to rip this from my insides
this way? I hurdle myself
headfirst into a mirror
in an effort to memorialize
fresh heart all over the closest floor
without a towel or a
polite giggle
or a posed frown.
no monologue or saccharine coat
or any real motive
except it was true:
I wanted teeth too.
lit a cigarette and choked.
take another drag,
i’m composed.
watch the smoke cut designs into the ceiling.
you liked this don’t forget the feeling
of the first inhale;
the first time you rolled the stick
between your fingers
your thumb smelled like
the kitchen window.
the first time you saw your brother
smoke behind the garage
and he sneered;
you had spray painted your name into it first.
before you learned to paint the worms,
he taught you how to shake the can.
he taught you how to tag the shed.
he taught you how to lie to dad
about the missing colors.
he taught you how to
curl up into a ball and drift
back into your own insides
whenever you hear the rattle
like baby’s teeth
being tossed left to right
inside a
bottle.
“anniversary”
slugs salted on the patio,
cicada shells clinging to the moldering
legs of the picnic bench
I set my birthday cake on when I
was five and still clamoring the plates
together for attention,
(and now?)
dozens of unclaimed Easter eggs
rotting under rusty swing sets,
a mouse writhing on a glue trap
that was just SHOVED
in a garbage bag
and me
just staring at the thing,
just watching it suffocate as I
am mired in self pity and
freshly out of love.
my wings tip towards
the sun and I’m triumphant
in my emptiness,
my patient nihilism I
chew when the void becomes
the only measurable thing
in my life I don’t
notice the oncoming car.
grasshopper never notices
the magnifying glass
or pesticide gun.
dog with the mange and glaucoma
blithely to cage.
drunk blindly to rage
then car
then grave.
snail to salt,
cricket to web,
temple to gun
and you say
no, what you never notice is
us.
“love”
there you are.
Saturdays and the 1 pm alarm clock
on snooze,
the bare-faced evenings
in throw blankets;
languid, but there is still
a rabid tongue
between fits of sudden inspiration,
moved
from sheets to
cushions to sheets
to type it down,
to shower
once a week
if you’ll allow yourself to feel warmth
graze your chin, scalp,
untouched thighs.
open your chapped lips to the sky,
feel the water rush your neck and
trickle down your navel
to soak your unseen toenails.
do not question anything
for those three whole seconds;
it is the closest thing to orgasm
you can manage.
it has been a tough change in seasons:
tights and boots and an expansive
blankness that still drives your body around
after work to get soy milk,
make polenta for lunch,
take out the compost,
take out the trash,
finish something you once started
when it was
skirts and cherry blossoms,
some organic laughter and a patient optimism
that seems unvisited but should be
worked out by now.
sometimes it is actually raining.
it is harder than that too:
cold and cramps and no tissues
or pads and an anniversary coming
that stings
and does not let go.
and you do hear from them
but with expectations.
you have wrapped yourself tightly
in some binding perseverations
so you constrict yourself,
restrict your errands, and bleed openly
on the carpet.
and sure, there is hunger,
but it’s quick and
you succeed in a relatively
docile surrender.
so what is there outside?
sometimes it is a blizzard.
then it’s flowers and unexpected showers
but it is day longer, sun higher,
you are not mired in the date of departure
anymore, and you forgive the monsoons.
your sensualizing emotions present themselves:
the gloss and black tips,
hips in sheer nylon,
a gentle sway.
sometimes it is unseasonably warm
and you have to hold your cardigan in your hand\
but you have managed a smile
and some sense of buoyancy
and dragged someone along
with the sleeves of
your unworn sweater.
you get lucky:
they want to take the
long way and you have a tendency to
suddenly rush things.
you are both broken
doe and the trap laid
for their arrival.
“ambush” or “8th house”
lick the salt from the crest
underneath my elbow
where the flesh is softest
and my nerves are most
on end.
it’s a spot I never tell
them about.
you feel something in me,
something growing,
you know I’m antsy
itching to grow the
space between us large enough
to span separate states
and you
let your lips rest there.
the polar vortex
has passed:
it’s Saturday
and the sun is out.
I am lying on my side
facing a bookshelf
that is only
half unpacked
nearest the crack in the
window and I feel a
breeze. I hear
a sparrow call me.
I hear a car pull away
and feel a wet tongue trace
the blue vein underneath
the skin of my arm
in wonder,
inquisition.
my hands contain
a spate and yet
you hold them,
drunk from my fingertips.
I hear you say the slow word
I strangled:
s t a y.
“Saturday,
and the sun is
out.”
Part 4: The Act Of Chasing Things
“Jung ponders, “How can evil be integrated? There is only one possibility: to assimilate it, that is to say, raise it to the level of consciousness.”
You couldn’t hear them move over the forest floor. The snow was fresh and soft like powder. Each step left an imprint but no resounding echo. You could only hear their breathing. You could not hear their steps.
Compared to the surrounding stark silence, their breath was bleating. Each huff was pained and loud. Since the two women had ceased speaking, it was all you could hear as they walked. All reserves were focused on completing the hike and returning home. The snow was at a halt. It was a windless day and they were making use of the eye of the storm. Within the eye, everything was hiding. Every once in a while a tree shook when a bird perched and a big clump fell and startled them but hardly any birds circled. Hardly anything moved at all. A crow called out to them hours ago.
“It must be noon,” Catarina said when she heard it.
Behind her, her friend said nothing but she heard her sniffle and knew she was wiping the snot from the nose on the sleeve of her coat. Her friend said nothing but Catarina knew she was resentful. Catarina had promised her peace. I have given you a gift, she kept to herself. She had heard that sniffle now for hours. She had glanced back enough times to know her black parka was glistening with mucus. She heard her cough. She could hear the rustle of the sleeve in the air as it made her way to her nose and did she feel sorry? They were trapped in the infinite stillness of the woods and each other’s brutal wordlessness surrounded by barren trees and an imposing gray sky. Once blue, now darkening, the woods were once dull, inviting and now growing toothed and sharpening. It was the beginning of January, seventeen degrees and Catarina felt it.
Their breathing was labored. Their cheeks were bright pink and dotted with tiny drops of ice and both women’s skin was an alarming shade of pallid, blue like ice or crystal lake. Each woman trudged in black gear and bitterness and Cat’s endurance was waning so she knew L’s was too. Both their breath came out in synchronized huffs one after the other. In front of them lay endless groves of brown trunks dotted with sparse patches of evergreens in the horizon; a brightening to the dense forest and an indicator of distance. Green meant car. Green meant escape. Green meant salvation but they still had an interminable white crystal blanket to cross. All conversation had ceased between the two friends. You could only hear breathing. You could not hear their steps.
Catarina guessed it was about four pm. They had gotten lost, separated from the trail and if they were not out when the sun finally went down, there was no way they were going to survive. They had no food or water. They had no phones. The park was abandoned. They had only a light layer of fleece underneath their clothing and they did not dress for longevity, but comfort. They were both catching cold which would breed pneumonia. There was no shelter nearby and the two women were growing angry and confused. Nightfall would complicate their emotions which would compromise their sense of direction further. She could see it in the distance: the veiled sun, the yellow halo obscured by boundless gray. It barely shone through the clouds. They were heavy and pregnant with blizzard. It was an unforgiving winter. It had been and remained unforgiving now. The sunset they faced would turn to black without portrait. We will survive, she had lied. She knew her friend would die. She knew that soon she would hear the twig snap and that she would run. She didn’t know what her friend do but she did know she would hear her scream. She would dart across the forest as fast as she could while her friend was ripped to pieces. She would sprint. She would sprint the whole way without looking back or without time to reflect on her reflex. She would have no time to wonder what L’’s blood attracts.
She had decided to wear a blindfold and forget the whole thing. It was agony to know and it didn’t seem fair. None of this was fair. None of this is fair. But she did get to see the wolf. It was not a promise but a possibility, and she was grateful in that moment. Six hearts in permanent marker underneath her black glove on her hand, she reached for her pocket to draw the other one: the seventh.
“You know, L, I keep time with my metronomic heart,” she sneered at her friend hours earlier, drawing the second around the wrist bone in black felt tipped pen. “It’s ten am.”
L. smiled behind, “Catarina…look at me”
“Yes,” she turned around to show L all of her teeth.
“You’re full of shit.”
“Yes,” she turned around to show L all of her teeth.
“You’re full of shit.”
He was gray and white with yellow eyes. He was hiding behind a larger tree with roots that twisted into several X’s like carved figure eights bursting from the ground. Low and keen, he held a silent snarl between his teeth. A wolf restraining herself from howl is a terrifying wolf indeed and Catarina had been spotted peeking. Without making a sound, she turned her head slightly to the left. From her periphery, she saw the wolf’s friend skulking carefully and quietly on the other side of them. He was also low and snaking through the branches. Walking this clearing for the past five or six miles exposed them. It will be faster, she said. She already knew.
At least one branch had fallen and the wolf wouldn’t see it. He would step on it just as he was getting ready to pounce and she would be afforded an extra second that would propel her. She kept her eyes and head down, hand at her side still, frozen in movement, stopped from grabbing the pen. She wanted to laugh. It’s four pm, she thought. I have a metronomic heart, she thought. I’m full of shit, she thought. She inhaled and felt her pulse begin to thrum and warm her body in anticipation. She began to lift the balls of her feet. She began to clench her palms into fists with determination, her jaw with anxious habit and from her left she heard the snap. From the right, she felt the hesitation. She knew there were only two of them. She began to run.
From behind, she heard her friend yell “Where…” before she heard her scream. Before she heard two dozen wings beating above her from the nesting sparrows awoken by fright and taking off from their hidden holes, she heard the lone screech. Before she heard the victory howl, she heard the sudden scream. Before her right foot hit the Earth again, she heard the sound of two wolves colliding at a throat just missing Catarina. You are lucky. Before she heard her breath quickening keeping pace with her racing feet, her racing chest, she heard the beginning of a cry for help ripped in half by a hungry team and a voice far away repeating a story: you are lucky. She was sprinting through the forest headed towards the green. It was 4 pm, 16 degrees and she felt it.
“The Woman Who Saw Her Own Death”
“mark me.
show the world who owns me,”
ah, the way you reread things and
see how they are about something
else.
this next section is called: foreshadowing, the before and aftermath of
everything
daturamoon.com 