All She's Got
O, that I could spend eternity lounging in my armchair, feasting upon words like a bushel of Fuji apples. I would fill my belly with botanical brunches, devour mathematical massala, munch Humean ham sandwiches and Socratic scones.
But instead of reveling in an everlasting bacchanalian of books, I scarf wisdom like a starved man, hardly bothering to chew, pressing centuries of patient wisdom into gaping maw, choking down calcified aphorisms and slippery syllogisms, squeezing enlightenment past incisors, canines, molars.
May I die bloated and stuffed because this life is all I've got.
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I will die starving. Despite my own hungry desire to pass in a field of wild wheat, I will die wishing I discovered more willingly the beauty of moss and mosquitoes.
Lay me down, then, among the weeds, and cover me with unfinished poems and thoughts we lost mid-conversation, and speak over me some half-hearted prayers to the gods both tiny and grand . Stop the priest mid-sentence, before I am committed to the ground, burial incomplete, in honor of all the things I left unsaid and unfinished.
Watch closely, then, for my body will not rot. Instead, see the lucky clovers and wise mushrooms sprout from my skin. Hear the wheezing in the hollows of my dead breast as aged philosophies and worn ideas leak out past teeth and lips that tried to eat and preach. My bones will turn to scrolls and stone slabs, my heart into a cup of Spanish wine, and soon enough, I will be no more.
–
When was it that Luna first became our world's lover?
Was it when Terra and Luna first began to court, two great masses in the emptiness of space, swinging round and round the tiny dance floor of our solar system? Was it when she was belched out of Terra's skin, made from the dusty ribs of our home? Was it when she was the mere twinkle in the great eye of some long dead star, a vision of cosmic romance not yet even formed.
If only I could ask her! String a tin can from here to there and whisper secret adorations for her pockmarked face and too pale skin. And perhaps she might confess that she still loves to dance, but she too worries what will happen when she's gone.
