We, Moons
We’re not depressed all the time, some of us aren’t even depressed sometimes. We’re okay, our hearts, dusted with pink. When we cry in bathrooms together it’s about men or our mothers or our fathers or our bodies. We are resilient, none of us have attempted suicide, although we do at times imagine what it would be like to have never been born. Is that sadness? Is that regret? We love men. We are ashamed of this attraction. We, the ones who aren’t lesbians or asexual, wish we were; we fantasize about lesbian communes or asexual communes. We take the curse of Genesis 3:16 to heart. Isn’t it a curse to want a man? Didn’t God intend that after the fall? We feel cursed. We are Eve. We develop crushes on men we’ll never meet, men in magazines. We prefer our men to remain onscreen where they cannot hurt us. We, protected by those alien-beams of light, that space glass. We envision those men down on their knees before us, looking up at us, smiling. We pat their heads and call them good boys. We use them. We crave and desire them. We leave them whether they want us to or not. We wear their clothes because they smell like them and we let the sleeves hang long past our wrists. We swear to one another we won’t call or text them during our Girls’ Weekend. We try to keep our word. We try really hard. They call us, they text us, they send us pictures of the flowers they’d have delivered to us if only they knew where we were. We are in the mountains or on the beach or at a grandmother’s home; the grandmother has passed and left it to us, left us her journals and her cake recipes, left us the blankets and sweaters she knit, the quilts and tea-stained books she read when she was young like us. We are not young, but we are younger than our grandmothers. We are young enough to still have our periods. We bleed together when the moons are death-darked and new, ovulate under the full ones. Their fierce, primal, ancient names connect us to the women who came before and all those who will come after: wolf, snow, worm, pink, flower, strawberry, buck, sturgeon, harvest, hunter’s, beaver, cold. If we had been in charge of naming the moons, we wouldn’t have changed a thing. Some of us are mothers, some of us have miscarried, some of us have no desire to bear children in our dark and starry wombs. Where do we go for emotional rescue? Where do we go to feel safe? Where do we go to escape the men who would rape and murder us, the men who would kidnap us, the men who would torture us, the men who would, the men who, the men. We are complete without them but we want them anyway. We love them but we want to hide from them. We drink champagne and wine and whiskies and stay up too late smoking. We eat dark chocolate brownies and coconut cakes and wake up and fry eggs with butter and chilies. We lock our doors at night and keep our secrets. We howl at the moon and paint our toenails with glitter and make promises, free before we leave. We return to our homes and our children and our jobs. We return to those men, the ones who keep us, the ones we are afraid of, the ones who would never harm us, the ones who protect us. We know they desire us, they are cursed with wanting to be inside of us. We are wild and cannot be tamed. They are cursed with wanting to tame us. They want us to be witches so they can burn us. They burn with lust for us. We use our own lust-flames to fuel us and keep us warm. We are better at this than they are. We read and write our books, sing our songs, scream our screams, and fall easily into the arms of a God who loves us. We fight a God who loves us. We beg for forgiveness for we know not what we do. We know what we are doing. We run away and want to be found. We want to disappear. We want to be seen. We search our breasts for lumps so our breasts won’t kill us, our cervices for tumors. We scan our bodies for poison, never knowing. We feed our babies with these bodies and offer our bodies to the men we desire and the men take and take and take and we give and give and give. We are handmaidens and helpmeets and neither of those things. We are created in the image of a God who can be both man or woman or neither. No empty vessels; we are achingly full, spilling over. And when we die, our souls pour out like water.
The Great Barrier Reef Is
Dying but So Are We
Minnie and her husband Adam were unusually quiet on their way home from the theatre. Adam was the actor, the star. Adam had to kiss his costar Caitriona during the play because it was in the script.
“Did you want something to eat?” Adam finally asked.
“I don’t care,” Minnie said, staring out the window.
“Chinese? Greek? Maybe a burger?” Adam asked, pointing to the restaurants as they passed them.
“Well, too late now. There they go,” Minnie said, fussily flicking her hand and waving to the restaurants, their signs. Shadows of people. Lurking. Waiting. Too hungry or too full.
“I can go back,” he said, tapping the brake gently. Slowing.
“Nope. I’ll eat something at home.”
“Are you angry with me?” he asked as he let off the brake, gunned the car forward.
It was late. A Thursday night hinting at a stormy early morning. As they’d walked out of the theatre, the sky had been a black-violet dream. The diamond stars, out just long enough to evoke wonder, were now hidden with the moon.
Minnie went into her purse, felt for the cool chunk of rose quartz in the little zippered pouch. Right there next to the earrings she had taken out after they got too heavy. Right there next to her three favorite lipglosses. The colors made her hungrier. Grape. Tomato. Peach.
“I’m going to practice downstairs when we get home. I mean, sorry if you need to sleep, but I need to learn this piece,” she said. Minnie played cello in a string quartet. She was playing a wedding tomorrow night. Her best friend, Stella, one of the violinists, had composed a new arrangement of a Nat King Cole song for them to add to their repertoire. It was the summer wedding season and the next four weekends were booked.
“That’s fine. I understand,” he said.
She wrapped her fingers around the crystal, loving the weight of it. The flats, the points.
“I know you get upset sometimes when I have to kiss Caitriona—”
“It’s your job, right?” Minnie snapped.
“Yes. It is my job, but I don’t want you to be upset—”
Adam spoke softly, came to a full stop at the sign before turning right. They were ten minutes from home.
“What does her mouth taste like?” Minnie asked, looking over at him.
Adam made a noise. Not a sigh. Something wearier.
“Minnie, I don’t taste her mouth. It’s a stage kiss. It’s a totally different thing,” he said.
“I know what a stage kiss is,” she said.
“Okay, then you know it’s not like a sexual thing. We are pretending to be lovers. Caitriona plays my wife. That’s all.”
Minnie’s stomach growled so loudly it hurt.
“But the two of you dated before, so it’s not all pretend,” Minnie said, using air quotes around pretend. She was effectively annoying herself and could only imagine how Adam felt about her at that moment. He probably wanted the car ride to be over like she did. Adam ran a yellow light, which endeared him to her. She could never be attracted to a man who would stop as soon as a light turned yellow.
“Twenty years ago, Minnie. Cat and I dated twenty years ago and we didn’t even sleep together. You know this. We’ve been over this. It’s exhausting,” Adam said.