The Man in the Moon

He should have been cold. He wasn’t.

He should have been tired. He wasn’t.

He should have been dead. He wasn’t. Yet.

He was nothing on the inside that could live on the outside.

The stairs were cold, the endless armada of ascendance leading to the fall. Concrete unfeeling, as far as anyone could know. He wasn’t wearing shoes. He had forgotten. Or forgotten to care.

The nights were longer than they were before. It should have been more time for the comatose state that could relieve him of all anxiety for those few short hours. It wasn’t. Some nights were the staring, the shifting and shaping of shadows run rampant on the wall. They were dark. He loved them. Sometimes he could close his eyes, eyelids falling to rest over images of bleak reality reflected in his pupils. Then the sleep would suffocate the conscious, if he was lucky.

This night there would be no sleep. Nor shadow.

The doorknob was as ice. He turned it slowly, skin peeling off the cold metal with reluctance. The air was shot through with winter. He stepped out onto the roof.

His eyes turned skyward. The stars were out in force, flaunting their beauty. Unrelentingly bright and cold and callous. He smiled a little. After a time, even the stars in the sky would die. He turned to the moon. Oh God, the moon. He saw the figure concealed there, no grandfatherly figure as depicted in the tales of children. Eyes of obsidian regarded him. Amused, old as time, staring out from craters with a hunger terrifying in its intensity.

The boy without shoes stared into those eyes. Into them. Past them. Through them. They sank into points, withering. He turned away from that white, grimly shining orb. The Man in the Moon would hold no sway tonight.

Broken glass cut into the soles of his feet, but he didn’t notice. Couldn’t notice. He was somewhere else.

It was a terrible decision to come to. He realized this. He embraced this. It was all he could see anymore.

He would never have considered it, before. But life was different then. He wasn’t the same person. Drastic changes were made, changes to keep the frail web of his sanity from falling into the place where everything breaks.

He wasn’t sure if he was still sane. He decided it didn’t matter.

There were only a few things that did matter. They were the why. He couldn’t stand it. The distance. The uncertainty. The terrible, killing, drowning, choking despair that would catch him by the throat and close the airways until he forgot. And then he would remember again.

He had tried. He had fought it. He had prayed.

He laughed a little at this thought, an unstable laugh that ran up and down the octaves, ending somewhere between them. In the end, none of it had done anything.

The cycle had always begun again. The changes had come. They had gone. They had left him gasping, breathless, lone watchman of a feeling that could no longer could exist.

Yet it did. Somehow. It propelled his bloody feet onto the ledge. It was everything. It was realization that the only desire he possessed was breaking. Dying. Leaving him with the knowledge of the thing that would never be. He closed his eyes.

None of it mattered anymore. Just the present. The end.

He looked down. The lights were always bright in this part of the city. They promised happiness. He couldn’t help but grimace. Happiness was best left in fairy tales.

He would count it down, perhaps, see if he could predict the ending of perpetual pain. He thought it was an idiotic idea.

He thought he would do it anyway.

He whispered into the air, the frost of his breath tearing out the last vestiges of his will.

“Goodbye.”

And then he stepped forward. It was a tall building. He decided to start at 14.

14

I’m not going to scream I hope no one is out for a stroll tonight I won’t scream

13

I am falling from the roof of a building

12

It seems taller looking down than it does looking up I’ve never looked down before

11

I hate this wind my eyes are watering I haven’t cried in months

10

Maybe that makes me less real maybe I will wake up maybe this is not

9

Fuck no this is real the ground is coming and I will die

8

It will be the end of all of this I don’t want to think do I want this do they

7

But they will hate me what am I doing I can’t do this

6

They will stop loving me no one will love me this solves nothing this breeds pain she

5

Will never love me but now I am killing even the chance

4

Nothing was final but now it is and I have ended it oh god oh god oh god

3

Fuck stop I can’t wait it’s over I will never be fre

He should have started at 12.

The lights died.

The stars sang.

The Man in the Moon smiled.