QUESTIONS REGARDING THE MOON
I wonder if the moon is the inside of a giant Oreo. Do I lick it first, save the black, crumbly sky for later.
I wonder if the moon is on Instagram. Should I follow it, gazing at the soft glow of its surface, its pearled filters, its untouchable life.
I wonder if I could slice up the moon like a big silver pie. If I did, I’d offer you the first slice.
If the moon is medicine, a white pill with healing inside.
If I could turn the moon inside out, what would be revealed.
I wonder if the moon is a ball of gauze waiting to be unrolled & wrapped around the wound of the world.
Have you ever torn off little strips of moon & wrapped them around trees.
Have you ever taken a hammer to the moon. Out spills the history of love. A river of blood. A trail of tissue-thin moths. A shimmering lament.
If you took the deepest breath you've ever taken & blew it at the moon. If it scattered into a trillion floating seeds like the white puffs of a dandelion. Would it root. Or just drift away.
If we took turns mining the moon for metaphors. Would we end up at each other. Our eyes reflecting each other’s.
If the moon were to fall out of the sky, would it feel cold & hard like a chunk of hail. Or malleable like hope. Would it wriggle in your grasp like a glow-worm, or hold very still for fear of falling again.
And if the moon were to fall into the ocean, would you find it glowing there, under the water. Would you hold your breath no matter the cost, only to stay in its company a moment longer.
And if the moon were to wash ashore, another hurt thing throbbing on the beach.
If you were to swallow the moon, if you could contain it.
If instead of pupils people had little moons for eyes & instead of a moon there was a giant pupil in the sky.
I was a pupil once—my whole self widening with light.
I wonder if the moon is an egg. And if it hatches, what then—narwhals swimming the cosmos. Silverfish circling the drain. Or only more wars, wars, the endless thrum of them.
I heard a story once: someone loved someone who couldn’t love them back, so one night they reached their finger up into the blackness & moved the moon to hang outside this person’s window. It didn’t make this person love them back: this person just moved the moon to hang outside someone else’s window. And like this, like a snail leaving its silvery trail across the cement, the moon connects us all.
I wonder if the moon is a mailbox. I almost know it.
And if the moon were a keyhole—would you bend and take a peek. Would you try to pick the lock. Would you wait outside the door, wondering.
Maybe the moon has nothing to do with feelings. Maybe it’s as disinterested as a cotton ball. Even so, you could use its plush to swab the open cut.
Maybe the problem is I keep wanting to use the moon. But the moon is not an object. It just is.
I wonder if the moon wonders about us. If it wears all our lonely confessions on its pocked surface. If each one leaves a crater in its skin. What happens then.
An earlier version of this poem appeared in the January 2015 issue of Cloudbanks & Shimbleshanks. Cover photograph by Darla Mottram.