When lucid whiteness
adorns the night, we
delight in the moon.
Walking barefooted, cold pavement
meets toes and we follow
our shadows while they grow.
Crisp mint air breathes freshness
against our faces, and
the street lamps hum–
infinite insomniacs emanating
fraudulent light. Ivory beams
stretch
and sprinkle the starched green leaves
of summer trees. We
lay on our backs in the grass,
dew collecting on each blade,
under the flashlight of night’s sky, our skin
speckled a powder blue.
We are enthralled by the moon.
Slivers of graygreen iridesce
out of the orb, swim
down to our noses like shards
of blue bottled glass,
invisible.
By morning the orb is no more
than a ball–wide, pitted
and hollow. It has become
a smear, a mirage–
spilt milk frozen
in drops against a baby blue sheet.
We long for the moon.
On the ocean its glow
spills
like floodlight over cobalt waves, like
an egg cracked open, sunnysideup.
It fills our skin as
we dig
our feet into the sand, writhing,
anticipating liberation.
We howl at the moon,
high pitched
and screaming. The bellow echoes
against the surf, curls
into the ever-moving black abyss.
Mom taught us how.
“Everyone’s a lunatic after all,” she says
and takes her stance, veins
bulging, head
thrown back, blacks of her eyes
absorbed
by white, elbows locked, arms
stretched in her wake.
