Moon

“You want love.  You don’t know what it means.  All you know is that you need someone to hold and to hold you.” – Pleasure Club.

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Snow moon

A moon, huge and blank in a white-sheet sky, can only make you lonely.  No-one achieves anything in February.  Sure, there’s work to be done and school to attend, but we’re all sluggish inside.  Watch a cat in winter and it knows the score - sat by a fire or hunched in a basket, a cat can wait anything out. 

My grandmother used to tell me snow swept everything away and wiped the slate clean; but I never believed her. To me, snow has always been greasy.  The white, fatty residue in the bottom of a frying pan before it’s put in the dirty dishes’ bowl to wash.

Worm moon

Occasionally, I put my ear to the ground in our back yard and I hear the sounds of the earth and the grass.  It’s usually after rain and when I get up, my hair is damp with water.  The blades of grass squeak and soil creaks tightly as worms push through to the surface.

The world begins to move in March.  Things begin to happen. It’s when I see her for the first time.  Two desks in front of me in our lit. class.  She doesn’t see me, of course, because no-one ever does.  But I see her and it’s like it’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything at all.

Pink moon

April is an explosion.  A fire, a rush of something inside me.  Is it God? Chemicals? Love?  I don’t know; but whatever it is, everything is brighter than bright.  The sky is Technicolor blue, the blossom on the trees a migraine-fuzz of pink. I feel giddy.  Sick with something.

Today, after class, I was packing my books in my bag and she walked past me at the point I looked up.  She smiled at me with that hesitant, half asleep manner I’ve seen her smile at other people with. But this time, her smile was for me.  I turned to look at her hair as she walked past.  All evening, I’ve been thinking about its shades of copper.  Its promise of autumn.

Milk moon

The street I live on is orderly and kind of beautiful.  Imagine the street in Halloween without Michael Myers, standing still and resolute, by the hedge.  When we are married, we’ll live on a street just like this.

We’ll bake cakes at weekends and we’ll pick apples from the tree in our yard.  Plums too, maybe.  On Sundays, we’ll eat pancakes and we’ll drink milk from tall glasses.  We’ll watch TV and laugh at the latest, crazy thing the world tries to throw at us.  But we won’t mind, because there’s strength and comfort in what we’ll become when we are together.

Strawberry moon

Through my bedroom window, the strawberry moon glows.  It’s so deep red and full, it almost looks too heavy to hang in the sky.  I imagine what it must look like if it was shining over the sea – that is, a freakish orb, broken and bleeding out across the water.

In our bedroom, through a future window, the strawberry moon will also shine.  On the pillow where she will be sleeping, the red of its light will add complex accents to the copper of her hair.  Tomorrow is the day I’ve planned to finally speak to her.  I wonder what her reply will be?

Buck moon

The muscles in my jaw and my arms flex. With anger brought on by embarrassment. In theory, she didn’t have to accept me immediately, but neither did she need to be so public in her brushing off.  It wasn’t so much the words – “no thanks, I’m busy tonight” – but the way she went off giggling with her girlfriends, that embarrassed me the most.  She was smiling as she spoke to me and what I’d previously thought was compelling about her smile, now seems a little cunning.  A little furtive.

It’s so hot tonight and I can’t get to sleep.  The moon winks slyly through the gap in my blind and where it touches my skin, I can feel it burning.

Sturgeon moon

I am fish bones.  Floating in the river when fish flesh has rotted away.  I am spiky and flexible, drifting in the water’s flow.  Weed catches in my spines and I become a mixture of animal and plant material.

When I was a young boy, so very long ago, I would go swimming with my mom and dad at the creek near to the house we lived in then.  Under the gurgle of the water, I would hear the stones moving on the riverbed.  The stones made secret sounds, made for me only.  A click as they rubbed against each other and a grinding when there was nowhere for them to find their own space.  In my bedroom, my teeth are grinding now.

Corn moon

By September, all memory of water has left me and I am an empty husk of corn.  My house, my street is dusty and close.  Everything feels as if it needs the summer washing off it, but autumn hasn’t made its mark yet.  This is no time, in between time.

I figure, though, if I just keep waiting, something will happen.  Yesterday, on the way back from school, I saw a crow in the road, pecking at a shard of mirror.  The movement of its head was exaggerated by its reflection in the mirror and it was so beautiful and strange.  In a nearby yard, some old guy was burning leaves and the whirling smoke from his fire only added to the crow’s mystery.

In class this afternoon, it was the crow I thought of and not her hair.  Her hair.

Hunter’s moon

And why shouldn’t I still take what she wasn’t prepared to give?  This is hunting country and so if needs be, I’ll hunt.

I was too lily-livered, too pussy-footed.  Too caught in the same acceptance of failure.  So now I’ll put on my boots and my old, plaid shirt.  I’ll take my knife and my dad’s gun and I’ll show her there’s still chance for us to be together.  Tonight, the moon looks like something from a film set.  Cartoon huge and artificial.  Too sure of itself.

Beaver moon

It’s so damned dark at night now, but the darkness has taught me something valuable.  In the dark, life continues.  The fish still swim in the river.  The jackals still howl at the moon.  The birds ride the last of the day’s still warm air currents and the beavers dig their dams.

Life is not a choice.  It’s a compunction, a habit and it’s not for me to alter the world. The mad light of the hunter’s moon has completely left me and if she is to choose me, then she will choose me of her own free will. 

Cold moon

Cold can creep up on you before you know it, and the season has turned in the slow blink of an eye.  In December, I love to walk the streets in the middle of the night, when no one is around.  There is only the harsh rush of my breath and the tread of my boots in the frost on the sidewalk.  Some upstairs windows may have lights on from late nights or early starts.  The odd dog or cat may cross my path.

I still think about her often and on my night walks, it’s like she’s walking with me.  But despite her company, I know how empty the world can be.

Wolf moon

In the grey light of January, I discover what I am.  Not a human hunter, but a wolf.  I’ve always been a wolf, but I didn’t recognise my own jaws and the amber of my eyes.  Now I have discovered myself, I will go to her house.  I will scrape with my paws at the bottom of her door and she will answer it.

I will lay my wolf’s head down in her lap when she sits on the step and I will make her love me.

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