"The Moon and the Sun"

I stomp my foot on the line of territory, my land of pure white rock, hands worn out from digging into a year's worth of terra cotta. Baked earth powders under my bitten fingernails. My eyes, these black craters dug into the carvings of my face, turn to the extraterrestrial forms in the sky. Everything stands at dormant at that moment—asleep, temporarily, I guess.
Should I wait for you, helioscope?
Should I observe the sun?
Like you do?
Yawns and snores, metal creaking and wood pressing arise from the great halls of the space's dormitories. It flows through me. I wish you'd become that. For me. The extraterrestrial eyes sing in my chest, lighting flames of the useless black, like they can never cause sleep, cause lethargy. But they do; they hypnotize to make something they're always worth for. So here I am, waiting for a presence everyone knows yet no one seeks. Here I am, shaking your last evidence out of the Earth to try to find you. Here I am, studying the hypnology of the sleeping stars like always. You admired that, like no one else; you respected my hypnophobia, the fear of closing my eyes just for one second.

Megalith croaks under the heavy weight of fat bullfrogs sitting in the seaweed-covered lake, it speaks silently: "You're such a comfortable liar, lithosphere." Wondering if the earth had something to do with your disappearance, I shovel my way into the soil, this solid, stubborn part of earth beneath my feet, wishing you weren't buried. I wish you weren't buried. Wish—like an empty hole in the lithosphere's lunacy, its insanity believed to be triggered by the full moon.
You're not turned to stone; you're not petrified.
And I'm not terrified.
All my hands find is light. My hands start to burn at the wrists and I hiss at the familiar pain. All you leave with me is this evidence, cruelties engraved into molten rocks I've never been able to touch. Knowing you can do better than that, I shove the soil back into the ground with my bare hands, watching as the rays start to smother and gasp for breath.

I've never been good with geometry, but you were—you taught like a scholar to earth measuring, equations, all that geology stuff about studying the planet. You were dedicated to Earth, for all I knew. I couldn't do that. My talent, an aching dream, measured your blood in liters. It had nothing to do with your obsession over Earth, until now.

Your smile is gone, for momentarily, while I shovel through my temporal salvations, your diagonal light slanting across opposite corners without you. Memories pass through the back of my bleeding skull. I can't think. I can't dream. You had been covered in the smoke once; you were turning blue. You screamed when the color started to match your eyes; I just sat and stared. Scream now? Yes. Please. I want to hear you before everyone comes out of their caves, before this diagram cuts through me. Your drawing used to be healthy, used to be organic, but look at you now—it doesn't cross its lines through anymore. What a shame, really. But it was my plan altogether, and I didn't care if it was under the bore of the light or not, and I didn't care if I twisted up your plans of geometry. In addition, I pieced a diagnosis together, an analysis to determine your drop,
because I said wrong.
I miss the lunation; I miss you understanding the fugacious cycle of one new moon to the next. I used to be a sleepwalker, until I peeked out the slits of my eyes to see moonlight: sleeping awake. Maybe it was the sun's lunacy; maybe it was the moon's breakdown when it couldn't search for the sun any longer, for the sun smiled behind the moon's back as it lightened other broader places. No one will ever know.

I've compared my love to your crossed solstice before; I see that it's just a waste now. It's just a waste. I know you're scared, but why hide? Why turn north or south?

I've contrasted a solar smile that's sliced through my crater wrists, anything connected to the sun, anything connected to you. However, once again, your rays burn through the trees slightly and I want to see you just one last time, heliometer digging rigidly into my jeans' pocket. When is it that I get to measure the sun's diameter? When is it that I'll be allowed to trace its burns? No, I shouldn't wait for you, helioscope. No, I shouldn't observe the sun.

I've prodded a heliotrope before, its small purple thorns sticking toward the sun in such a betraying way, such a needy virtue, that I ripped apart its roots and threw it to drown in the lake. Maybe I'm not meant to shadow the sun? I was not always hiding—I saw everything, even when I stood burning in your daylight.

You're turning blue and it's such a lovely color for you. Blue…a permanent color? I tell you, helioscope, it's been a long time coming, and now I just have to watch your sunrays seep from the ground instead of the sky, tortured,
but you just have to push it back down.