talking to the Moon

Short Fiction | Leonie Rowland

when my girlfriend texts about the sun, she capitalises it like she’s referring to the newspaper: Picked up some milk. The Sun looks pretty today x

i picture her standing in front of a magazine rack, swooning at the headlines. she brought The Sun home once. i found it in her bed, tucked under the blanket. when I asked, she said it was on her side.

the Moon is on my side. it is the only word i always capitalise and never text about. it is impossible to capture, so i settle for commands.

‘climb from the sky,’ i say. 

the Moon replies, ‘what is sky?’ at first, i think it’s a philosophical question and conclude that the sky is impossible to climb.

‘float to me,’ i try, but now the Moon is stuck on the sky (being too close to comprehend it) and in the sky (having no way of climbing down).

sometimes my girlfriend is close to me, and i feel like we’re also in the sky, floating, falling. i am weightless as she drifts inside me like smoke. then, i look at her and realise that she is the sky, turning dark, surrounding me completely.

i watch the Moon at night while she’s asleep, her body growing warm. if it understood its circumstance, the loneliness it lights, it would make choices like mine. i stroke my girlfriend’s back; she murmurs.

i have asked it before to come for me and crush me where i lay. it would bury The Sun and crush my girlfriend too. no more milk, nothing pretty. the whole world in darkness. and yet i can’t help but say

lie on my body like she does. forget the fire that warms everything but you.