la mia luna, before

BY: EMI HARRIS 

1 

we buried her fur beneath a cherry blossom tree. remember it. a circle of dim stars winking out and silence more metallic than the blood in our mouths. middle of the day & the beginning of autumn. imprints of round eyes shimmering like the surface of an unseen lake. known and unknowable. you always wondered what her dreams were like. did she see you? young with thin ribbons and broken thoughts. we are a circle of sheep without a shepherd. solemn. sinking. you think of yesterday, of solitude in a dark car in the vet parking lot, howling like a dog, fetus curled, yellowed lamplight, one day soon the storm will come she said to you. her voice. remember it. shot with lightning. heavy & hollow. lift her fur and find bones, falling. the waters will rise. skeleton dog speaks. the dancing ghosts are just beyond the horizon. 

2 

ghosts danced in your father’s eyes, you saw them when he looked at the floor. he saw himself in the swirling wood, blood dripped into his pupils from the crown of thorns piercing his head. you hated him. remember it. the sound a piano makes in minor key, repeatedly. his human hands broke the lock on the pearly gates, and you were the angel of judgement, sin-free, hissing, and temporary. melted by the salt in his tears. the holes in his hands were just as big as the one in your heart. you couldn’t hate him. the sun yearns for somebody to burn, but her fur is buried beneath the cherry blossom tree, growing cold. a martyr of time. forgive.  

3 

forgive the silence for killing you. it was instant. the door opened into a temple of shame. we walked through the threshold each day, a family of bodies for the morgue, forever mute. the abandoned toys gnawed at our legs as we waded through the rising waters. like corpses, floating. death as a metaphor for death. nothing could be more definitive.  

4 

nature defines death as neither the end nor the beginning, but something like skin stitched by the chemical remains of supernovas. gold threaded through hair and fur, speckled on faces, and cemented into the earth. life is nonlinear. a raindrop in an ocean. the reflection of the moon on water. SN 1987A’s light echo. when she looks at the moon from up there, does she see your future? is the water rising? 

5 

your future, you vomited up in pieces. at school you studied maps of your own grief and at home you walked through a house of mannequins. painted smiles and preplanned clothes. at night you dreamt of clocks winding backwards, of dancing yourself a month younger. an embrace, in slow circles. you were sick with nevers, burning with forevers, caught in the riptide of sleeplessness and cold moonlight. a guitar riff stationary and spiraling. your health teacher told a story of his dog dying in immense, piercing detail. you were a butterfly pinned to the wall. for breakfast, lunch, and dinner you ate plates of aching wants. they rotted your teeth but there was nothing else you could stomach. you vomited up futures. you searched for the eye of the storm. 

6 

one moonless night i dreamt of our backyard, vast and circled by trees. i saw a young dog running through the fresh-cut grass, darker than shadow, louder than silver bells. she ran past the cherry blossom tree. remember it she said to me. the tides shifted. she ran in orbit around an unseen earth. crescent, quarter, gibbous, full, crescent, quarter, gibbous, new. my luna, now born.