Lunar Eclipse

Is she the sun? Her eyes are bright and her skin is golden, saturated to a warm coffee brown. She lies flat beside me on the sand, her smile sweet and dimples indenting her cheeks. A constellation of freckles shift and shimmer and undulate along the crinkles in her skin. Perhaps it is the slow fluttering of her lashes, or the sheen of ocean water glistening along her exposed clavicles that pull the question to the forefront of my mind. Or perhaps it is the warmth she tugs to life beneath my skin, in my veins. She must be the sun.

Is she the sun? I feel lethargic under her exuberance, under the drag of her fingers against my scalp. She leans over me, her hair a darkened curtain framing her face, pleated with slanted rays of sunlight. They filter in, ever so inconspicuous, from our half-closed shutters. Or perhaps she was born with them, the warmth she exudes a part of her. When she opens her mouth to sing me a soft little tune, gold spills around me, shining silk ribbons that wrap around me and keep me warm and pliant under the maddening press of her limbs against mine. I feel as though I am a ceramic pot of sun-warmed honey, stagnant and sticky. But she must be the sun.

Is she the sun? Or is she more akin to a glass of spilled wine? A dazzle to her smile, an elegance to her steps. She dances around me with a tease at the tip of her tongue, shoes loud and clicking around mine. I spin and I spin and I spin, but try as I might to keep pace with her, all I ever manage to catch is the tail-end of a laugh tickling the curve of my ear. She slips from my arms as if we are two opposing ends of a magnet, yet when she decides I can be in hers I come alive. Under the sweet drag of her touch my skin burns into ashes that flutter about her in a pretty halo. But at the end of the night she is always brushing off her dress, combing through her hair, and traipsing away into crevices where I cannot follow. She leaves me drifting in cold air, lost, unable to piece myself back together. But I cannot fault her. Even the sun must dip beyond the horizon, must make way for twilight. So she must be the sun. 

Is she the sun? I am tossed in a dizzying circle, the merry-go-round I am chained to incapable of stopping. My thoughts are scrambled, my nausea rising. She stands in the center of my involuntary circumference, dangling the keys to end my torment with a radiant smile. When I can take no more, my tears fly from my eyes, lash against my skin. She sticks her foot out, then, pulling the merry-go-round to an easy stop with the tips of her toes. Her touches are soft, the press of her lips against my temples gentle. But they leave in their wake a searing burn, far more prominent than the chains around my wrists. My skin flares red, and burns something fierce. It itches, and it peels, but that is simply the consequence of being under direct sunlight for too long, with not enough protection. I burn and I spark but the sparks sting, no longer make my blood sing. Instead, the blood coagulates under my skin into a heavy mass until my body feels weighed down, until I feel far too heavy to navigate Earth’s gravity. She is burning me, but is that not the sun’s job? So she must be the sun.

Is she the sun? Or am I only convincing myself that she is? I am tired of hearing the same question rattle around my mind, unsatisfied with the reasoning I offer. She is a beacon that ships flock too, but one that switches off before I can find my way home. Perhaps there is a duality to the way I love her. A desperate need, and an all-encompassing jealousy. Her presence is the first drop of rain on parched soil, the first gasp of air after being underwater for too long; yet I cannot stand that other crops bloom and flourish beneath her drizzle, that others find life in the oxygen she offers. She must be the sun, with the way she breathes life into those far beneath her. But I am starting to wonder if I am not a shadow, flickering to life only under her attention; perhaps the fragility which I have fallen victim to is a result of her evanescence. She is the sun but with her warm embrace come the steely fingers of shadows. I feel so terribly cold, her warmth evaporating with a terrifying permanence. She must be the sun, but why is she disappearing? 

Is she the sun? Or was she simply less dim than her surroundings? A fraction brighter and a fraction warmer; barely any distinction existed yet enough for me to latch onto, to succumb to. Perhaps she is the sun, and it is not her fault that she has made a shadow out of me. She is a fickle thing, and as she drifts further and further away from me, I wonder if we are even as interconnected as light and shadow. Perhaps we are instead two objects that are not meant to exist for one another. I wonder if she realized that before I did. Nowadays she only ever exists in my orbit momentarily, with fleeting glances and hurried smiles. Yet I still find myself stumbling in her absence, now more so than ever, and I cannot breathe, cannot live, cannot function. She hurts me when I am with her, yet when we are far apart even more so. But my existence in her absence is a contradiction to my shadow existing because of her light; so I must be something separate from her. I must be something on my own. But that could not possibly be… could it? I have given my love and my laughter and my tears to her. She is my everything. So she has to be my sun. 

Is she the sun? I have decided she must be. I wonder if the question should instead be, what am I? How might I live a life without her light illuminating the fine print for me? We no longer speak, yet when I close my eyes I can see her jubilant and carefree on a bed of sun-warmed sand, as vividly as if it were yesterday. I blink and I blink and I blink, but I only see sections of my life arbitrarily defined by her laugh, her eyes, her lazy blinks and dimpled smiles. Is she the sun? Is she the sun? Is she the sun! I yearn to discover the answer to a question that is entirely subjective. If I am not a shadow, then what am I? What am I? What am I! Perhaps she is the sun, yet the sun is not what I need. 

Is she the sun? She is. Thus, I have decided that I must be the moon. We are a study in opposites; she is the golden warmth of joyful festivals and summer solstices, I am the chilled dark leeching her light to ward off my own gloom. It is not her that has been shifting and running, but me. It is not her that is a temporary mirage, but me. We are a juxtaposition when placed next to one another, existing simply to emphasize each other’s differences. I cannot take her warmth for my own, no matter how hard I try. Because she is the sun, and I am the moon, and when we fall too close to each other, we become a lunar eclipse.