Moon, Moon

MOON, MOON

by E.S. Taillon

(Content Warnings: amatonormativity, disassociation, maladaptive daydreaming)

(“Oh, moon,” she says. “Tell me another story.”)

There once was a rabbit who lived in a cozy warren with five little round windows. From the windows, she could see the other animals of the village as they came up the garden path to visit and drink tea—the kettle was always on. Her fellow creatures would bring trinkets and snacks, games and cards, and the rabbit would keep company with the frog, the badger, the snake, and the cat. (The snake is not venomous. Or was “poisonous” the right word? No, poison is when you consume the dangerous thing, when it’s your fault. Venom is when the danger comes to you. A subtle distinction, but an important one. She has been over this so many times. What was her fault and what was not. How much she could have been expected to know of the sharp intrusion, the dizzying numbness, her body lying still in the warren of her sheets.

No—the snake is venomous. But it chooses not to strike because it knows itself.)

From her garden, she got everything she needed, like stalks of potato plants wrapped around her paws and long clumps of tubers she’d heave from the earth. She would make fries and baked potatoes and gnocchi; carrot cake and blueberry muffins; nut loaf and banana bread. Everyone would come over and help, and they would each take home a small piece of everything, which was more filling than a large piece of one thing.

In the summer, they would go to the bluffs and watch the stars rain across the sky. In the fall, they would make popcorn and put on plays in a hay bale amphitheatre. In the winter, the northern lights. In the spring, the cherry blossoms. It was all so simple, so joyous; the same beaks and snouts telling the same stories. A warm, tingling friendship bound them all together.  When an argument did happen, the aggrieved parties swiftly made up—closer, after, for having learned a deep truth about their neighbour.

One day in summer, the potato stems wilted in the cracked earth. It hadn’t rained for weeks and the village grass had gone wiry and yellow. Even the creek where the rabbit sometimes filled her kettle had sunk down in its bed to a trickle, and she couldn’t fill it without getting pieces of dirt inside too. When the cat came over, there was no tea, no carrot cake.

“We’ve never had a drought like this before,” the rabbit said.

(All those who live through historical events believe they are unprecedented. All those whose hearts break think theirs is the most final fracture. The moon’s waxing gibbous belly swells in the winter sky. She will birth a billion more months. She will be seen by people the world over, sharp people, luminous people, full and hollow people like her, and surely—surely, in that thought there is some comfort, some lesson. But she looks up and feels herself so far from anyone it’s as though she stands on the blasted lunar surface.)

“Oh well,” said the cat. “I know how to lick moisture from the air. I’ll be alright.”

With that, he turned away and stared out the window. The rabbit folded her paws carefully in her lap.

“That’s impressive. So impressive.”

“Yes, it is,” he said.

“You must be very skilled to be able to do that.”

“Oh, it’s not skill. It’s cleverness. The air holds many secrets, for those with whiskers sensitive enough to feel them.”

And the rabbit listened as the cat explained the secrets of the air. It can tell you about a storm unfurling on the horizon with short, zappy words. It can ring out like a struck wineglass if an argument was cut short moments before you entered a room. It can carry the thoughts of the mail-owl as he flutters by—fur, hatchlings, a nugget of bone, and a missing animal poster.

Most of the time, the air is too thin to support one’s weight.

Sometimes, it’s too thick to rise from bed.

(Too thick to flow into her deflated lungs. She’s done her time. She’s lain there, numb, wondering when the breath would come in. If it were possible to drown out of water. The air and its secrets. The way it carried away her ecstatic joy as a part of itself, but left her unbreathing sadness untouched a month later. It’s more selective than she had been.)

So, the rabbit learned the secrets of the air.

The frog came over the next day, his skin leathery and blistered. His pond was a hot puddle, so the rabbit filled up the sink one drop at a time. He sat in it with a sigh of relief and said nothing for a long while.

“Thank you. I shouldn’t impose.”

The rabbit tutted at this, and convinced him to stay until dusk. As the time stretched on, he found in him a story that needed to be let out: the story of when all the land was underwater except for the very tips of mountains. Life was so good for the frogs that they stopped learning the songs and dances that made the rain fall from the clouds. The ocean was so immense and powerful. Nobody thought it could vanish. But the change happened little by little, so slowly that none of the frogs realized what had happened until the land had emerged. A whole new world born when they weren’t looking. (Only when she emerged from it did she realize how hot the water had become. That was something: to be out of the boil, to actually feel the burns. True, if she’d stayed, she wouldn’t have felt them. But everyone knows how that story ends.)

The old songs and dances that brought the rain, that had been mostly forgotten—the rabbit took them in. When the light faded, the frog left.

Even once there were no nibbles and no tea, even though it was so hot that game pieces stuck to the table, the animals kept coming to visit the rabbit. She had the largest ears: they could hold so many secrets. (This isn’t a burden to the rabbit, this holding of the secrets of others. Every kindness gives her more energy. She does it for herself, not for them.) She learned about clouds from the sheep. The hot breath of the hyena taught her about moisture. (She remembers it all; there are no holes where unimportant things have vanished, only to become significant in their absence.)

By the end of the week, the rabbit knew what to do. She went around and knocked on doors. With the frogs dancing and singing, the cats reporting on meteorological conditions, and the animals of the valley scurrying to and fro to help according to the rabbit's instructions, the sky began to change. Clouds condensed out of the blue. And finally, the coolness a blessing, the rain began to fall in drops as fat as blueberries.

(The animals exist in a state of dreamlike warmth where friends show up right as they’re wanted, and where loneliness feels like a good, long book that you can put down whenever you want. She holds onto this feeling. In the aftermath of the breakup, friends had drifted this way and that. Really, her friends had been his friends. Really, she moved to this city alone, and now finds herself wandering its faraway night. She knew every speck of light along the hills of her hometown, wobbling in the dark. Here, there is only the moon. Everything else is someone else’s childhood waypoints.

This night, she stops in front of the mattress store, still dimly lit to show the latest in Posturepedic technology and self-cooling pillows. She holds herself by the hand. This is something she does, sometimes. 

“Chin up, kid,” she tells herself. “I know you want to go home. But home is where we hang our coat.” The air is freezing, stinging her cheeks. “Come on. Let’s go. When we get home, I’ll make you peanut butter on rice cakes.”

Her self looks up at the moon, nervous. She follows her gaze.

“Moon, tell us a better story,” she whispers.)

There once was a girl who grew up surrounded by books. Her parents lived in a castle on the side of a mountain. They made their fortune with art: her father played the violin with so much emotion that the notes formed full sentences. He could translate a poem into music and the listener would be able to write down the original in full, in whatever language they spoke. Her mother painted scenes so real that you could simply walk into them, and had made a lot of money painting shortcuts between important cities. But she had also painted tunnels and hidey-holes for people to escape from bad situations, which had angered the powerful men who had created the bad situations. So their little family now lived far away from anyone.

As much as the girl loved her parents and their dinner table talks about the representation of birds in the fourteenth century, she knew she wanted to see the world. She’d read so much about it between the shelves of their library that soon, she wanted to know what it would be like outside of her own daydreams. (Her youthful, honey-soaked daydreams, indolent and ripe. It’s not as though the girl has the whole world already sweetening the tips of her fingers. Not as though the afternoon crawling—racing—across the plush green velvet of the corner couch is her wildfire through the plains. Or as though she will never feel this glorious hour again except in the briefest flashes, at the most unexpected of times, and it will leave her starving the next moment.)

Her parents, being artists, understood. In the vineyard, they set up some scaffolding—bits of unused castle and outbuildings, torn up for wood. Being people of the world, they knew a little bit of everything, including how to build an enormous, fine ship. Inside were shelves upon shelves, which she stocked with her favourite volumes. Her parents worked the wood with all their skill, art, and love. When the ship was complete, it could sail any body of water—one as hostile as a tempestuous sea or as narrow as a creek. It could even glide, even-keeled, atop solid ice.

Their goodbyes were picturesque. From the shore, her father dabbed at his eyes with a monogrammed pocket square; her mother waved a slow, meaningful hand. With the passing of weeks and months, eventually, their conversations about her absence would grow easier and more hopeful, and they would receive her varied postcards with a fond smile. (Their emotions are not difficult or imbalanced, and they accept their daughter’s departure. They enjoy each other’s company and are able to comfort each other, having understood from the start that a child is not meant to complete an incomplete life.)

The girl went to all the places from her books that existed in real life. She weighed anchor in the turquoise waters of a thousand small islands. She spent her afternoons eating fish sprinkled with lemon in the port as a cat curled around her feet. She sat in the blank silence of dense fogs and met ghosts of old sailors there. All along the famous rivers of the world, she traced a careful path between the banks and followed the course of time and civilizations. She visited floating cities and huge stone pillars carved by wind and orchards that could snap under the weight of a single breath in the winter, only to thaw and become supple under the weight of a hundred tons of fruit next fall. Everything was wonder, from the bustle of markets to the quiet lamplight circle of her bed, her hands, her book. Everything was magic.

(From what she knows of magic, the approaching full moon will be a time of completion. The full circle. The climax. Under a wide eye, burdens can be presented, judged, and banished. Tonight’s moon, a fingernail away from full, would be inspiring witches everywhere to prepare for it: the ritual, the dance. She’s never really believed in it. But she did once see the moon, perfect and searching in the sky, and feel a part of herself transformed by its startling beauty. Now, she can only question it across the vast distance. And feel nothing in response.)

The world held so many stories, her endless curiosity could feed forever. Once, on a sun-baked cobblestone street, she heard of a book that would grant the reader immortality. She pondered this for a while—less than a day. (Of course the girl wants to live forever. Even with the pain of watching her friends leave her, one by one; watching them grow old and hunched under the weight of the life they’d made for themselves before becoming empty flesh. Yes. There are always new friends to be made. She herself is made new with every turning of the page. Always a way forward. Always hope flaring like wildflowers after the fire, a second blaze. She simply has planks of the ship replaced when they wear out, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s still the same ship after each plank had been replaced in turn. What matters is the mending.) 

After much diligent research, she found the room where the Book of Immortality was kept. It was guarded by a single bureaucrat behind an enormous marble desk. The rest of the reception room was cavernous, seemingly endless, falling away into grey shapes too blurry to distinguish. She had to ring the small bell directly beside the bureaucrat to get his attention; he rubbed his bleary eyes, as though emerging from a dark den into unexpected daylight. She tried to talk her way in; beg; intimidate; reason. But the door remained shut, the bureaucrat unmoved.

“You need a signed approval sheet from the higher-up,” he said, fidgeting with his green tie, the only thing he wore that wasn’t beige.

“Where can I find them?”

He shook his head. “They aren’t here right now. But you can try again later.”

She sat with her back against the wall—he had the only chair—and the days blurred into nights. He copied numbers from one book to another without pause. When he finished, he erased the numbers from the original book, then copied numbers from the copy back into it. This continued several more times, neither the girl nor the bureaucrat eating or sleeping. Finally, she went back to her ship and returned with a stack of books. She read aloud. The bureaucrat didn’t pause his incessant copying; in fact, he worked quicker, his pencil moving to the rhythm of her words. As she finished the first book and immediately picked up the next, to avoid the dip of sadness that always follows the closing of the back cover, they both quite forgot their disagreement. Carried on her voice was the richness of the world, was something other than the four walls and marble desk. By the end of the stack, the bureaucrat was positively smiling. But he still wouldn’t let her pass.

“You’ve really made my week,” he said. “But the book behind that door is heavily restricted. I’m sorry.”

She sighed. His pencil scratched. The air settled again in a thick layer on the surfaces from which it had been disturbed. The halfheartedness of the light and the emptiness around them could no longer be ignored, were in fact seeping into both of them. 

“You work so hard,” she said, “and you never take a break. Let me help you, at least.”

She walked over and picked up the full book of numbers.

“No, no, this is my job. It’s okay.”

“It might go quicker if you don’t have to look back and forth. I’ll just read them out loud.”

He hesitated, then nodded. She began to read. The numbers, both familiar and meaningless, washed over him where there had just been words, art, music. His eyelids drooped. In her best monotone, she pressed on, and before the third page, his eyes had closed. His head listed along his shoulder, down his arm, and alighted on the marble desk with a loud snore.

Quiet, quiet, she stepped past him and opened the door. The Book of Immortality was there, on a pedestal. She placed it at the top of her stack of books and carried them back to the ship.

She lived forever, surrounded by books and cats, and was indescribably happy.

(She enters her apartment. The warmth is a reprieve, but she feels weak in the artificial light. She must have completed the motions of her bedtime routine, because soon she is in bed with minty breath. She rolls over to stare at the slices of moon visible through her blinds and the grasp of bare branches.

She can no longer fall asleep without a story. She builds them out halfway, abandons them, returns to them, remakes variation after variation of the same one. There must be some chemical effect on her brain, a release of dopamine. The same way the exercise keeps her numb and soothed. Busywork. Is it bad, to be comforted? Is it sad, to be dreaming before your eyes close? Outside there are only the stark lines of the parking lot, the stack of pallets out back of the restaurant across the way. There is the feral screaming of raccoons. There is a shadow darting through a pool of light—a rat? An empty wrapper?—which she follows with her eyes until a leaf lands perfectly on top of it, as though drawn by fate, then is perfectly still. And she realizes this shadow moving with such life and urgency was just the shadow of the falling leaf. It feels nothing. So why do her eyes sting and her nostrils swell and block?

“Oh, moon,” she whispers through a crack in her throat.)

There once was a tree who was madly in love. Every spring, she drew on all the energy in her sap to push forth an explosion of petals, each one shaped like a cartoon heart. This was her love letter. In summer, her leaves grew thick and waxy. In their serrated edges were the words of a hundred thousand sonnets, unreadable to anyone but her. When fall came, she clung to her leaves as long as she could, even when the frost bit them down to their veined skeletons, in the hopes her love would see.

(This story is not a tragedy, but a triumph. If it matters, it hurts. If he’s not jealous, he doesn’t care. She’s heard this story so many times she can’t imagine a different beginning, middle, or end. But she knows where she lives and breathes. It’s in the dizzying space between confession and reciprocation. That searching hope, that terror. And the relief of being loved back. Deemed worthy. That hair’s breadth of time where there exists a way out of embarrassment and defeat, an opportunity seized by famished mouths. The rest is dull as a plot graph.)

Her longing soured from the inside out, from her pith to her bark. Her efforts had left her exhausted, but he hadn’t noticed her, this year or the last. He was too far and too weightless. So instead of petals and leaves, she focused upward. She grew as tall as she could, neglecting horizontal growth, seeds and suckers. On the night of the next tempest, when the air was so thick with storm it was hard to breathe, she stretched towards the sky. The lightning was a scouring, an instant immolation—no room for pain in the white heat. Particle by particle, she rose as smoke. What was left of her met the cloud that she loved. For a moment, there was a sharp line of separation between the two of them. The moment stood alone and burned. Then they mingled, and it was impossible to tell smoke from thunderhead, tree from cloud. (The rest is unimportant.)

They lived out their days in the troposphere, a sunny realm of unending blue, the story, the whole story—

(The moon grows silent. She waits for another story. The pause presses on her chest—she prefers them one after the other; she chain-smokes them. The moon stares through her blinds so hard it feels like a question.

“Moon, moon,” she mouths.

Nothing comes. She resorts to reading the moon’s dry seabeds and craters. Tomorrow is work that keeps her busy but sedated. Yesterday is pain that robbed the stars from the sky. She is only present here, in bed, and only in the tiniest doses she can manage. But the moon says nothing, and she says nothing. She just pleads silently.

Then the numbness of her body breaks, and then everything is a lightning-struck feeling. A sinking, a soaring—a bite like lemons and saltwater. She laughs out loud, which isn’t the right sound, but it’s something. She swallows it down to her core. It pumps through her. The moon blinks slow as a cat.

She falls asleep to the sound of her own breathing.)