-Sheree Fitch
One night walking home in a freezing rain that pricked the
skin like shards of asbestos I looked up at the moon. It seemed
to me a golden eyebrow arched above the earth. Then, as if I
were watching some sort of photosimulation fast-forwarding
the phases of the lunar cycle the moon ballooned out before me,
a helium-filled cyclopean eye that blinked once then bellowed:
How do you all still have gall enough to call youself a
human planet?
It was not an angry voice more a sandpaper shout that
reminded me of dead leaves as they cartwheel down dusty
roads, a sound that makes even the bones lonely and the throat
close.
A cabbie was driving past & I heard tin whistles and singing
like wind chimes.
Hypnotized, I held my face up to the sky until the rain bit
my cheekbones & I wondered if miniature daggers of rain on
nights like this could stab deeply enough to make me bleed so I
held one hand to my cheek clutched my bag of milk and bread
in the other tried to run in the wind like running on the spot--
picture some human Leaning Tower of Pisa -- all the while
imagining showing up in the emergency room and screaming:
It seems the rain has slit my face wide open.
Will I need stitches?
& they would tell me there is no way to stitch up wounds
inflicted from the heavens
You will need a special thread found only on the moon
Then I would die.
They would write me up like those people struck dead by
lightning or spontaneous combustion.
My tombstone would read something like it rained on her
parade too soon or rain rain go away only everybody would
know the r was a p, pain pain go away, & still I had not settled
on a proper epitaph by the time I reached
my front door which during my absence had transformed into a
mouth to swallow me inside to swim in the saliva squeals of my
children & later
after tucking them in bed
I plotted my exit.
But why?
I can still hear you asking can only summarize:
once the moon has beckoned
once you have witnessed a miracle of light before your eyes
once you have been sliced through to bone by a drop of rain
life on earth
simply
will
not
do.
