The Waning Light of a Distant Moon

It is waning when it is about to become dark...the colors gently sliding each day until gone.

It is the stage when even night is darker...like water at the bottom of the ocean.  A few lights to pinprick but nothing stains the night.

It is no longer full...no longer high.  It is lowering and emptying...trading in light for a shadow.

Slipping away...sliding off the edge. 

The way I let your fingers slip away from me...the last tip of your index finger finally falling away and returning by your side. 

It is now a quiet and cold comfort...like the moonlight that once shaped a silhouette of you in a room with me. 

Perhaps you are outside too at this moment...but doubtful...it is very late...the sounds of a city muted and distant. 

You are likely asleep...long ago...long before a tired and pale moon clawed itself up for another night against the sky.  It is starting its descent, quiet and slow...

and it feels like it is the only thing I can see...the only thing visible to me.  It is the only other item in the universe and it is right here in front of me...it is, seemingly, touchable...at least if I jumped...and it stays there...distant...quiet...waning.  It is...what you used to be...what you are becoming.

But still my only other item in the universe.

The Ghost in You

Vanish and linger...

The Velcro-pull as you disappear...whether behind a door or from a room...I feel the stretch, the tug and the snap and even the scent of you remains behind so briefly that I can almost imagine you there if I just close my eyes.

You fill me like a vessel, your day-part in mine...the anticipation of the exact moment when the outline comes into view...I consume the shape of you...the space of you to pull into me and loiter...for just a bit.  Always...just a bit.

I'm not even sure what I would call the time in those moments...certainly not minutes although if I were to glance at my watch they'd be speeding by unusually quick. 

But at other moments there is stoppage...like that moment in an airplane when the decompression happens and you feel time moving against you reluctantly....

The wrenching in the departure though is always...always the same.  Every time. 

And I've been of course in such absence...where I can feel time like a glacier...barely discernable movements, but I'm sure it's moving...as a day becomes a week, and a month becomes a year.  The hours of empty portions...an unfilled vessel now dry and dust-filled...it is a memory filled patina...but it collides with the desire to build such new ones.

It is the can't.  It might be the won't. 

That is there...the door that will never quite open. 

And I hoard the moments like a sickness...gathering every piece, bits of broken porcelain....paper that is long yellowed and broken beads from jewelry that represented the shattered times we were together and then we were apart. 

I sit in a room filled with thoughts of bribes and money and how I can craft a scheme to re-capture you...how I can convince...coerce...cajole.

But it is a fruitless effort...a crack-pipe dream.  Which makes it really, really hard sometimes.

But occasionally, just sometimes...I can catch the ghost in you and I can see you still there.  I can almost feel you.  Almost.

The fingers of you upon me...wrapping tightly against a heart...filling your grasp as you squeeze the sweet memory of you out of me.

The Politeness of Strangers

Killing with kindness....

the conversations were stilted...staccato.  Fair weather and vanilla.

Clenched. 

Rote.

Benign. 

Loosened hands that had once grasped were now empty palms...

The airwaves carried no hint of desire, no secret knowing smile.  No wink or slight nod.  He may have even dialed a wrong number...but then her voice appeared and he knew it was hers...knew it like you knew the taste from a bottle high up behind the bartender.  You knew. 

He knew.

In  a world where she had brushed against him and intertwined...she now skirted across him like the long extended branches of high weeds, just glancing against him and moving on.  Not staying...not lingering or loitering.

Brushing away.  Lightly. 

He folded up their conversations like wooden scaffolding that had once held them up, once constructed their connection.  Once joined their pieces.  But was now just the wooden parts that collapsed in the middle and folded like tent poles...to be broken down, tied together and stacked and arranged so delicately neatly.  Never really revealing what they once were and what they wouldn't be again.

With the irony of his reaction to seeing the name on the incoming call...he knew the politeness that would ensue. 

Reconnected strangers running into each other at the market.

Business people recognizing each other in the airport.

You'd never imagine the times they had held each other in a dark.  You couldn't tell from the conversation.

Songs

 

Part I

 

"I wanted you to know...I love the way you laugh...I want to hold you high and steal your pain...away...

I keep your photograph...and I know it serves me well... I want to hold you high and steal your pain...

Cause I'm broken...when I lonesome...and I don't feel right when you're gone away

You've gone away...you don't feel me...here...anymore"

-Seether, "Broken"

 

 

 

Sometimes I believe the thing I build for you is beautiful....exactly as I wanted your brain to absorb it and see it...like a new sense discovered or a new taste on the palette.  I want to sting memory-strings and pluck parts of you from comfortable places and throw them into fires to make a discomfort but then again create an almost exhilarating new nerve ending.  I want disruption.  I want that.  But in many ways, I do want to steal your pain away.  But when you're gone, you are away and don't feel me anymore.


Part II:  I found a picture of you, oh oh oh oh
Those were the happiest days of my life
Like a break in the battle was your part, oh oh oh oh
In the wretched life of a lonely heart--The Pretenders, "Back on the Chain Gang"

I think the snapshots of my time with you were delicate and glassy...like dream fragments.  Like magnetic pulses felt if a surgeon tips a needle into a brain part and behind your eyes a photo emerges.  My memory is a quilt of images...woven together over time...older ones frayed at the edges, recent ones clear and distinct.  Not sure what it means other than if a song plays I hear and feel it like water on my skin...sometimes warming, sometimes cooling depending on the mood.  It's amazing the effect of lyrics.  Amazing.

Part III: 

Cold and frosty morning - there's not a lot to say
About the things caught in my mind.
And as the day was dawning my plane flew away
With all the things caught in my mind.

And I wanna be there when you're coming down
And I wanna be there when you hit the ground

So don't go away,
Say what you say
Say that you'll stay
Forever and a day
In the time of my life
'cause I need more time,
Yes, I need more time
Just to make things right---Oasis, "Don't Go Away"

 

I travel too much...I travel too far.  In the distance and junctions I am alone with just strangers and I fight the urge to cave to just randomness and fleeting bits of the moments I am in.  Rather, I would much prefer to dwell on the past pieces and cling to a pier as the tide pulls out...and have it stay as all chaos and low waves crash against me yet stay holding onto something that doesn't change.  I think the issue is I'm the one departing, yet I'm the one asking you to stay.

 

Part IV:  I tried to go on like I never knew you
I'm awake but my world is half asleep
I pray for this heart to be unbroken
But without you, all I'm going to be is incomplete--Backstreet Boys, "Incomplete"

 

This one is embarrassingly cliché.  Not going to say anything more on this one.

 

Part V:  Oh simple thing, where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on
So tell me when you're gonna let me in
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin--Keane, "Somewhere only we Know"

 

It is simple...it started simply.  A glance, a pass-by...a call, a text.  A minute, a moment. Fresh, crisp.  New. Strange.  Soon ebbing into familiarity and comfort.  But still simple.  And like the most powerful cleansing and purifying feeling in the world.  You breathed into me, your sweet moist kiss and your scent of you...an essence that my body and my brain absorbed in electrical pandemonium and exhilaration.  It was simple...but the impact on me was terrifyingly beautiful.

 

Part VI:  You let me into a conversation
A conversation only we could make
You're breaking into my imagination
Whatever's in there is yours to take--U2 "Song for Someone"

 

I allow you the penetration into me with complete disregard...a wanton violent act that you can create and indulge...I want you to carve and cut, dissect and cleave, pull and tear and have freedom to explode into my vast spaces that you own...you own parts of me, wholesale caverns of my insides...free to scream, echo and light fires and burn pages.  It is all for you to take.  Pile up, consume.  It is not on a platter but in my own willing hands, to scoop up and hold to you and offer up.  It is servitude.

 

 

Part VII:  I have died everyday, waiting for you
Darling, don't be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more--Christina Perri, "A Thousand Years"

I just love this fucking song.  I love her tattoos.  I love these simple lyrics and spoken almost way of singing.  It's a teenagers song.  It's a song you'd never play at the gym. It's a song that when I hear it on the radio I swing fucking pendulum swings of emotions into a piñata of you.  I just single thread my brain and it is filled with just a soundtrack of us and it is over-wrought and over-born.  But I like soundtracks to movies and if we made a movie of us this would play in the credits in the end.  Listen to the way the song ends...the violins and piano...and the way it closes...with the quieting.

Part VIII:  Midnight,
You come and pick me up, no headlights
A long drive,
Could end in burning flames or paradise
Fade into view, oh, it's been a while since I have even heard from you (heard from you)--T. Swift, "Style"

Dear Lord...a Taylor song.  But I'll be goddamned if this doesn't remind me of us.  Not the characters per se as my hair isn't as described but the fact that the time erases quickly and wild eyes consume our interactions despite the long blocks of hours that separate our interactions.  It's just a nice way to reminisce without worrying about what happens when months spool and then there we are.

So these are the snippets...bits and pieces of my playlist...not a Spotify thing because apparently that's too revealing but in the grand scheme of musical influences I find these a bit enchanting and even more so appealing. 

I just thought that maybe you should know.



Pillow Distance

 

 

 

 

 

It never waned.

True, there were evenings that it was a lead weight.  It was a blackened scrap of paper hissing in a rain after being caught by flame.  A remainder.  A left-behind.

It was a pilot-flame in a darkened garage…if you knelt down in the darkness you could see its blue tiny fire….remaining.  It was persistent. 

He tried to tell her that…sat awkwardly on the porch with the bent nails and wood splintering off into him if you rubbed against the grain.

I’m not so sure why I think of you like a season…like a fifth season…definitely not winter.  Pretty close to a fall…maybe an end of summer.

She stayed in her side of the place, a glass of bourbon melting ice into liquid in her hand.

That’s called an Indian Summer then…when you have a nice day in the usually cool fall.

He glanced at her a bit.  You’re more than a day…it’s like recurring.  Not random. 

Well there are only four recognized seasons so I think you’re out of luck.

At times he chafed at her distance…he knew

(thought he knew)

How she felt…she had even told him for fuck’s sake…

But the actions were imprisoned.  She held storms inside of her that rivaled those on Mars, great tempests seen from space…but from her slight distance he couldn’t see a hint of them.  She wore a placid face…that rarely fell.

Did you know Phobos is failing?

He asked the question completely out of the blue so he could re-boot her line of thinking…the negative angles of his seasonal discussion.  He was frustrated, but couldn’t just say that.  She was too much in a struggle and she wasn’t offering up much.  In these moments she could be almost unkind…it was in the pillow-distance moments that she revealed. 

There were no pillows on the porch.  He had already checked.

What?

Phobos.  The moon of mars, well at least the largest and innermost one.

She didn’t say anything…he lifted himself up off the step and took the two down to stand on the lawn.  He looked up but saw nothing…some light fog had peeled in as it did this time of year.  No sound of the ferries…they had stopped their runs hours ago.

He may have been on another planet…in another season.

So yeah, he began…gravity is slowing pulling it apart…this object that for years has been circling Mars, drawn by its pull, constant in its returning, constant in its distance….if you were standing on the surface you could see it rise and fall each day.

He walked a bit further out on the lawn but the sky remained blank…unblinking.  He saw her shape on the porch.  It remained blank…he couldn’t see if she was blinking or not.

Anyways, the way Phobos is made up with materials is that an interior like this can distort easily because it has very little strength and forces the outer layer to readjust.  Researchers think the outer layer of Phobos behaves elastically and builds stress, but it’s weak enough that these stresses can cause it to fail.

Why are you telling me this?

He started walking back towards her.  As he got closer the porch lighting draped itself around her, softening her shape.  But he could sense the burn of the stare and he suddenly knew how Phobos felt.

His steps brought him back into her orbit.  He could feel her pull against him, the usual sensation whenever he happened to drift into her atmosphere.  The familiar.  The tug of energy.  If he were to turn and walk away he would feel it on his back for awhile before fading. 

He hated that fade.

I guess I’m telling you that sometimes I need something beyond orbiting you.  Something beyond a distance.

I know…it came out as a whisper.  I’m sorry.

I don’t want sorry.  I just want maybe tiny things.  Whatever you can give…but maybe…just more frequent?

In the yellow light of the porch her head shook slightly…once again the storms she kept away from him were in full strength…but even in this close distance he couldn’t see them clearly.  He just knew they were there.

I can try…but you know it is hard.

I know…but something bottled up eventually dies.  It eventually grows stale.  And that frightens me.

She looked up at him when he said that.  How much time does Phobos have before it fails?

He smiled.  Well, they think 30-50 million years.

She reached out to him and pulled her down to him, holding his head and kissing him.

I’ve still got some time then she said.

Cleave

It's normally around this time, this waste-land hour when the world is semi asleep and the cities are darkened between us.

It narrows to mere rudimentary items...breathing, heart beat. Simple stuff.

The transition from winter to spring can be desolate. Cold, barren trees unbecoming and bereft of even the tiniest of leaves. Brake lights and knobs turned to heat and car rides in quiet silence. Golds of a morning, pinks of a sunset. These all remain the same.

An afternoon drags its heels in and lumbers toward an end of day.

I feel you.

I feel the way nylon envelopes me and contorts against me. That is you. It is the clench of you against me that leaves grooves and indents.

I settle in and the feeling vanishes. As you are not really here at all. I succumb and start to haltingly fall asleep.

When a sudden fractional bit of you cleaves into me and I awake and realize against the backdrop of night that I am exceedingly alone.