I vaguely remember a story someone told me when I was only eight years old. It was something about the Night and the Day and a love old enough for legend. Something about the Moon and the Sun and the fate that Mother Nature and Father Time birthed into their children. It spoke of the way the Sun caressed the Earth and how the Moon kissed the Sea, affairs etched into the Universe, it spoke of how they reached to the Earth in their desperate attempt to be close to each other.
At eight years old, I thought love should be easy and there was still a bounce in my curls when I walked. I cried in my bed every time I thought I saw the Man in the Moon yawn because I didn’t want either of us to fall asleep and miss out on the dawn. I wept for every time the moon crept into the evening sky.
At eleven, baggage weighed down my curls like the backs of cars packed too full of regrets, I began noticing scary things in my reflection. I harvested fears and they bubbled in my belly, growing larger than galaxies and trying to claw their way out of my throat. I clutched my insecurities like a favourite childhood toy and they morphed into black holes in my sweaty palms, swallowing my fondest memories. When I realized my imperfections were catching the glare of the Sun, it lost its appeal for a while. And I craved people’s sympathy so it must have been something about how the Earth twirled between the Sun and the Moon that made me want to dance to any other song but my own.
By fourteen, my greatest hopes had been devoured and my hate for myself had come alive and begun to tickle its breath down my spine. Bright places made me uncomfortable for fear that someone might notice the unusual darkness of my shadow. Still, my desire to be wanted exploded like a supernova of “don’t ******* ignore me” and I thought I might be like the Moon. It was something about the Moon always loving herself more when the sea cradled her reflection, and my only feelings of self-worth budding when a man cradled my head. I thought of the Man in the Moon and something about him being the Sun portrayed in her cratered eyes and I saw him every time I closed mine so it must be the same, it made me feel special.
At sixteen, I realized that I wasn’t the Moon and that the feeling when he cradled my head stopped when he continued to cradle his manhood, and I realized that a girl cannot stare at the Sun like the Moon can or it will burn her retinas, I learned the privileged take advantage of their ability to get what they want and I realized no one gave any such privileges to me. It told of the time the Day first met the Night and how the stars had ceased in their breathing. The seeds of bedtime stories by the fire buried themselves on the tips of tongues in our ancestors in the moment of their eclipse, at the sweetness of their kiss, when the Moon first met the Sun.
To the man whose face is forever sculpted into the inside of my eyelids from pupils that are still too damaged to see clearly, whose words are forever echoing in my head at night, you are no Sun. To the man whose memory made me cry at sixteen over the realization that he was no more than a hot iron, imprinting himself into my ability to call myself worthy, your memory was burnt into me with hands that peeled the innocence from my skin with the same ease and greed you might peel the rapper off a candy bar. You proclaimed yourself a teacher and then preached intoxication from the hilltops as though it absolved you of your sins, I hope your faith is stronger than your willpower, because all you ever taught me, professor, was how to lick my wounds in silence and that time restores everything but my wasted virginity. If I ever see you in the street, I truly hope I don’t recognize you. I pray that the monster in my mind is not manifested in your smile because I don’t want to look at you and learn that I just didn’t see it there before plus I honestly don’t know if I’d hate you.
I vaguely remember a story someone told me when I was only eight years old. It was something about the Sun and the Moon and the beauty in their dilemma, and I think I’ve got the moral figured out. It was something about love, real love. A tripping over heart strings and missing a note kind of love, the kind that doesn’t make sense or follow rules or break them, but that hiccups like a young girl after drinking too much wine. The kind that giggles in the face of impolite imperfection and never says sorry. It was about that kind of love and the fact that only love and nothing else, not even hurt, lasts forever. And so I think about it and realize that years from now, when I’m old, I may see the story differently and change the way it’s told.
I wrote this a while ago and I've gone over it a thousand times but I like it this way. It was spoken word the way I imagined it but I haven't done anything with it. Long but I hope you guys like it enough to read to the end.