The moon was smiling at me.
I reached up with open arms and an effervescent giggle. The moon, my friend. My friend, the moon. Moon. Friend. Moonfriend. I stopped caressing the night sky, suddenly remembering another friend. He was on all fours at the bottom of what he deemed to be “our stairwell". Violently flatulent and hurling uncontrollably, he turned to me in between retches, realizing that my attention had found him once more.
“I… am so… s-s-sorr-ry…” He spluttered, breathless, before starting up again.
I waved a hand in nonchalance. I was alone with the moon. Truth be told, I much preferred my earthly friend be open-mouthed and splay-legged on the floor than on me. My lungs were gardens watered with alcohol, forbidden to criminal tongues.
He was scared and scary, weak and forceful. Our friendship was based on a shared self-destruction – his desire for “girls who hated themselves”, and my attempts to find self-esteem in people who would not dare to challenge it. He was not a moon in my night sky, but perhaps more of a comet – capricious and short-lived as it sparks and fades across the stars. He knew this too, and so chose to lust for me as a form of mutilation. This was no first, or even a last, but being someone’s poison never stopped overwhelming me. Perhaps I had held that razor to my own skin so many times that I’d become it. My only bittersweet love affair was with science fiction.
I reached to the sky with dissected arms and a pleading sob.
But the moon always smiled at me.
~~~
She would sing in the middle of the night, once my eyes were calm and the air tasted like ashen stars. The best times for our friendship were when I were no longer so lucid – my mind slower and my body somehow less angular. Of course, this only happened when I’d been drinking. I sighed breaths of adulthood from gnawed lips.
The mere presence of her more graceful figure made me feel I could relax into myself. And under the seemingly cosmic gaze of her eyes, I felt I could spin magic.
Of course, these triumphs were my own. But in the insecurity of youth, I attributed them to external factors – dreams of luck and of beautiful, imperfect ladies. I was yet too careful and too frightened to stand on the two feet that had kicked and clambered their way for themselves, alone.
It felt appropriately cautious and predictable to attach myself to close-minded girls who could crush my spirits before I crushed my own.
I could always mend pieces. I loved jigsaw puzzles, tinkering with tools. I loved to fix. Anything of mint condition, however, I spit up through citrus lips.
And so, she sang.
As girls like herself would sing their way out of adolescent strife, and into a speechless and spineless adulthood.
While I just kept fixing things to break them, and breaking things to fix – the first of many self-defeating relationships with myself and others.
I was waiting at the edge of the moon for her voice to shatter me in one note. I was waiting to sew my translucent, tattered rags of skin together with spun gold.
I am now heavy and malleable with my lashings of gold stitch. But I no longer wait for she. And she no longer sings for me.
I reached up with open arms and an effervescent giggle. The moon, my friend. My friend, the moon. Moon. Friend. Moonfriend. I stopped caressing the night sky, suddenly remembering another friend. He was on all fours at the bottom of what he deemed to be “our stairwell". Violently flatulent and hurling uncontrollably, he turned to me in between retches, realizing that my attention had found him once more.
“I… am so… s-s-sorr-ry…” He spluttered, breathless, before starting up again.
I waved a hand in nonchalance. I was alone with the moon. Truth be told, I much preferred my earthly friend be open-mouthed and splay-legged on the floor than on me. My lungs were gardens watered with alcohol, forbidden to criminal tongues.
He was scared and scary, weak and forceful. Our friendship was based on a shared self-destruction – his desire for “girls who hated themselves”, and my attempts to find self-esteem in people who would not dare to challenge it. He was not a moon in my night sky, but perhaps more of a comet – capricious and short-lived as it sparks and fades across the stars. He knew this too, and so chose to lust for me as a form of mutilation. This was no first, or even a last, but being someone’s poison never stopped overwhelming me. Perhaps I had held that razor to my own skin so many times that I’d become it. My only bittersweet love affair was with science fiction.
I reached to the sky with dissected arms and a pleading sob.
But the moon always smiled at me.
~~~
She would sing in the middle of the night, once my eyes were calm and the air tasted like ashen stars. The best times for our friendship were when I were no longer so lucid – my mind slower and my body somehow less angular. Of course, this only happened when I’d been drinking. I sighed breaths of adulthood from gnawed lips.
The mere presence of her more graceful figure made me feel I could relax into myself. And under the seemingly cosmic gaze of her eyes, I felt I could spin magic.
Of course, these triumphs were my own. But in the insecurity of youth, I attributed them to external factors – dreams of luck and of beautiful, imperfect ladies. I was yet too careful and too frightened to stand on the two feet that had kicked and clambered their way for themselves, alone.
It felt appropriately cautious and predictable to attach myself to close-minded girls who could crush my spirits before I crushed my own.
I could always mend pieces. I loved jigsaw puzzles, tinkering with tools. I loved to fix. Anything of mint condition, however, I spit up through citrus lips.
And so, she sang.
As girls like herself would sing their way out of adolescent strife, and into a speechless and spineless adulthood.
While I just kept fixing things to break them, and breaking things to fix – the first of many self-defeating relationships with myself and others.
I was waiting at the edge of the moon for her voice to shatter me in one note. I was waiting to sew my translucent, tattered rags of skin together with spun gold.
I am now heavy and malleable with my lashings of gold stitch. But I no longer wait for she. And she no longer sings for me.
✱✱✱
| Alex Creece loves video games, gross medical phenomena, and fresh fruits. She can often be found within a cocoon of half-written letters and her own despair. Or here [creecedpaper.com]. |
