The Light In The Ground
We were lucky for a long time. For millions of years the moon and the moon’s ghost orbited us, spinning in different directions, always narrowly avoiding hitting each other and we just carried on doing the laundry and walking our pets and arguing about the news in restaurants, unaware of the delicate balance above us and how lucky we were for it. And then what happened is the moon and the moon’s ghost collided. No reason. It’s just what happened. And the tides were finally freed of their magnetic leash and the oceans reclaimed the cities so we left the cities and moved to the mountains and then we left the mountains and moved to the jungle and then, when things had calmed down a bit, we moved back to the cities. But it wasn’t the same. Everything was turned inside out, you see.
There’s a bright red ribbon bent ever so slightly at the horizon where I shovel through the earth getting closer and closer to the light in the ground. And my limbs are monstrous out here, and the trees are monstrous out here, and soon I find an underground river and it leads me against the light and toward your surface.
In the dark while you’re asleep I tell you I fear for you and I’m afraid of you in equal measure. In the dark while I’m asleep your fists find some drywall and really do a number on it. Atop a skyscraper we look down to see the sky and up to see the ground — inside out. When we collapse, we collapse up. When we fall, we fall everywhere all at once.
“It was better in the jungle,” you said. “I don’t disagree,” I said. “But we have to make do somehow.”
My attitude is my own finger gently running across the edge of a knife and if I push too deep I’ll get a good look at what’s really in me. And I’d rather not, for now.
On every horizon I have ever found you, you’re taller than the clouds and your back is always to me. And I’m sprinting as fast as I can, for what feels like days, until you’re the only thing in my sight and I barely have enough breath to say your name before you reach down and split the earth in half.
