Eva Sullivan, “Monochrome Reflection”
The moon is different now.
It hangs like a porcelain plate
nailed neatly to the dark.
Too round and too pale,
as if it has never known hunger.
The tides have stopped embarrassing themselves.
Water no longer climbs the shore
like a lover who cannot take a hint.
It arrives, it bows, it retreats.
Everything in moderation.
The headlines call it a breakthrough.
The graphs are very convincing.
I stand at the edge of the ocean
and wait for it to want something.
It doesn’t.
Once, the sea would rush forward
with its dress half-unbuttoned,
salt breath hot against the ankles,
dragging its need through sand.
Now it behaves
like a girl taught to cross her legs
even when she is alone.
My body has followed its example.
There are no more red emergencies.
No more lunar swell beneath the skin.
The calendar pages fall.
I used to feel the sky
pressing down on me
a thumb in the center of my chest,
insisting.
Now the sky is weightless.
Now I am, too.
In the evenings I lie very still
and try to remember
what it was like
to be moved by something
that did not ask permission.
The wolves have thinned out.
Their ribs show in the forests.
They lift their faces toward the porcelain light
and nothing answers back.
Even their hunger has softened.
In the city, the streetlamps glow brighter
than the moon ever dared.
People take pictures of the perfect circle
and call it beautiful.
It is beautiful.
That is the worst part.
There are no dark moods left in it.
No bruised edges.
No vanishing acts.
It does not disappear for days
and return swollen with secrets.
It simply exists,
clean and unwavering.
Somewhere in my hips
an old tide knocks softly.
It is small enough to ignore.
I ignore it.
I have become very good
at holding water without spilling.
At smiling through the new gravity.
At swallowing the bright, tasteless light
until my throat forgets
what salt was for.
But some nights
when the porcelain surface flickers,
just slightly,
as if something behind it shifts,
I feel the memory of its pull.
A deep, unsanctioned tug.
I remember being feral with longing.
I remember wanting so much
it changed the shoreline.
The moon steadies itself again.
The ocean lies down.
I go to bed.
And in the dark,
so quietly I almost miss it,
my body practices rising.
Not yet a storm.
Not yet a flood.
Just the smallest
pulse, that refuses
to synchronize.