The Moon is Falling

I’m on the highway and the sky lights up,

A star is falling,

No.

It’s the moon, a bowling ball flare, a sound I’ve never heard before, like blade against blade in slow time.

The moon is falling.

I can feel the bodies in each car around me, in front of me, beside me, the breath in lungs, the beating of pulses, we all hold it, hold our steering wheels, we wait together.

The sky falls a colour black I’ve never seen before. A quiet black.

The strings of my body ring a cold, true, inevitable panic,

But I’m alone.

No. It’s not supposed to happen when I’m alone.

A frisbee whisk of flame, a rumble before and after and all the way through, a crack of a whip that has no end, flying glass, the world is glowing, everything I knew in a light I’ve never known, every particle inside of me and around me is a vibration so violent, I don’t understand how it hasn’t happened yet, how I have not died. It’s happening too slow, my thoughts are too clear, I’m alone I’m alone I’m alone.

There it is, a northern lit current resurrecting through my limbs, my hands, my nails, my skin, the colour blue maybe, the feeling of black and then

It’s you.

As if your body has just protruded through the windshield of your car and into mine,

It’s you, lit green, like a lantern, a colour so soft and so certain and familiar.

Here you are, our eyes colliding, I feel my laughter from miles away,

It’s been so long!

There is a nonsensical existence between us as we float and stretch towards each other, I suddenly understand, yet it isn’t sudden at all.

I’ve known and I’ve known and I’ve known, like a map on my skin, but here I have no skin, there are no details, there are no words.

I somersault through water into your soul, your bicep gently cradling my chest as it always has, but I know we are not bodies here, these are the things I knew once and we watch them twinkle away into forever and nothing.

It’s you! How did you find me? How funny, I just knew. How crazy?

We are crying,

No.

We are wavering, heaving, choking, gasping, running, holding, bursting. It reminds me of something we used to call relief but it’s something else, it’s something new, and yet so familiar, achingly nostalgic, a story told from our mother’s gently creased eyes,

A wonderful voice.

We have voices, entangling our souls like vines, they sing to us. They breathe with us. They remember us. They never forget.

I wake up.