La Lune, Por Siempre

OCTOBER 14, 2019

A room --- a makeshift home to invite in the most wondrous imagined lives. Daydreams galore, complete with wistful glances at the white ceiling, even in these, you, as a child, had found faces, stories. 

Slightly mournful, you packed your books. One by one off the bookshelf. All your knick knacks, withstood the test of time. Of heartbreak. Countless betrayals in the form of rapd heartbeats against a pillow, with wine purple covers --- suggesting opulence. 

Opulence, you could spell words like that. As a child, winning the admiration of adults, only to retreat. And never again felt pride.

Your decoration, although a child, suggests just that. Decorated by a child, growing --- you can trace the years based off the posters, playing cards on a braided strand, fairy lights, with their warm yellow light still call in the night breeze, beckon night butterflies as though they were the moon itself. Every vibrant memory, sepia toned now in your head relives its glory, faded and dancing in the sunlight of the afternoon as though it were just yesterday. A postcard from Weed, Oregon, a calendar of places you’ve yet to see. Again, you could trace the quiet epochs withstood in this room.

And so she does. 

In the quiet, when the room is quietly hollowed out, the room seems to cave in, alone in the darkness. Laying in the same bed you would weep in at seventeen; you sing a lullaby to this former self, light a candle and bathe in the warming light as moths do. Francis Lai sings along, an orchestra for the romantic.

The used. 

And all those dirty shoes your mom used to ask you to wash, please! They are as quiet as all the footsteps you ever took. Through rivers wading, through the dirt of the alley, under a full moon as you went to meet friends in a church at midnight.

The moon would soar above you, listlessly and wonderful. To the human eye, as slow as molasses --- as sweet as honey, as quiet as petals spilling from a wind torn garden, you sang to the midnight. And an ode, here, as you part, to the windows, spiders have blessed and kissed as their home. 

Everything seems to stand still, and for you, gone now, it just might be this way forever. 

Comme nos voix ba da ba da da da da da da

Nos cœurs y croient ba da ba da da da da da da

Encore une fois ba da ba da da da da da da

Tout recommence, la vie repart

You spin and spin and spin, weave gold from nothing --- long for the caseful honeycomb, decorated with melted candle wax and crayons in old tool boxes. As though the first grade were the most important time of your life; everything seemed to feel that way. Forever, an ache that throbbed needlessly out of habit. Just habit. Your old journals, read by your mother who could not understand the language, but yearned to know that person still.

Comme nos voix

Nos cœurs en joie

On fait le choix

D'une romance

Qui passait là.

You shrug the cobwebs off, and pass a ghastly hand through the walls. How you had wished you could disappear within them, so as to avoid a scolding, so as to avoid growing up --- always so self-reliant, stubborn and aching, aching still. 

A makeshift home. A place where you vacuumed and felt as though your limbs were growing through the windows, through the plaster of the walls --- like Alice in Wonderland, too big for even her own heart to contain her. Wistfully, you glide through the window, as you did at your most self-destructive and rebellious stage. Crawling through the window into the big night sky.

Chance qui passait là

Chance pour toi et moi ba da ba da da da da da da

Toi et moi ba da ba da da da da da da

Toi et Toi et moi.

Its raining, you note. 

How wonderful it was to make a home from nothing. Carpet, with dried paint and blood, freshly vacuumed. How turbulent it felt, to be awake in the night at thirteen, wishing you could be anything but alive. And now?

Now, how terribly still and boring it is to be dead. Quietly and pretty you went, never a nuisance --- words still in your throat, as though you could summon the courage from your tongue to possibly whisper them to the night sky. The stars wouldn't scorn, they've welcomed you with open arms.

And, how quiet the night feels. Empty with crickets and finally --- the train whistles. Roaming the tracks repeatedly, like hands softly over a lovers body --- holding the Earth tightly, roaming. In the daytime, kids might count the passing cars, with their graffiti tears and stains, rust. And you imagine where it might be heading. 

If you could have ever jumped on it and gotten out of this impatient town; you stepped over the rocks and dirt to get home.

“I live on the wrong side of the tracks, the place where marigolds grow, for the dead and for the pleasure of those alive.” 

Whispering softly, in the afternoon at the foot of your altar. 

Makeshift, thrifted. 

Is there any feeling in this? How do I feel, not think? 

Heartbeats as fast as hummingbirds, the dust falls lightly as you sighed and wished for more. More, here, meaning less. A home, a place to call your own.

 Where the sound of your own voice would startle you, alone and wonderful. In the mornings, you imagined, a fresh cup of green tea would open your eyes. The whistle of the tea kettle, the morning sun, birds outside, would join you in a song of ease. Of morning. All this imagined, daydreamed as a prayer to the stars. 

And now, far away from the possibility of reaching something of the sort --- a cottage style home, with mushroom rings growing around your eyelids. The air as warm and listless as your blood was, waiting to be cradled by the hydrangea twilight. It does not rain much here, nor do neon signs ever look so bright. But hollowed,

with the absence of anything but coolness --- everything feels alive.

A kiss, a kiss, a kiss, you blow to the child you once were. Taller now, you take the front door, rather than that creaky and cobwebbed glitter of a window. Into the night sky.