Me (Moth)

by Amber McBride

Me (Sani): I’ll hide with you in any world you want, Moth.

Our “Summer Song” is a red string lacing our tendons together.

There is not a particle between us. Like we are buried in the same hole.

On nights we sleep close & unseam in the morning, the places where we no longer touch feel raw.

Sometimes tricks hurt your heart. My people think ghosts can cling tightly to you. Like a shadow suit? Sani’s frown lines collect like a crash: Yes.

I wonder if he feels it, too, like nothing will be close enough so maybe far away is better.

How strange, how quickly lifelines merge like the vines in me reach across air to play in his hair.

we share the darkness that pushes into each of us.

It hurts to know you will leave. It’s hard. Everything leaves me. My voice, my heart, my mom.

He says it like a prophecy I can’t rewrite.

When Sani looks at art he inspects it like a thing you love without knowing why. Sometimes Sani looks at me like I am the Glittering World. Sometimes he looks through me like I am wispy fog.

Some parts are so tall, they threaten to puncture the sun.

Swinging feels like dancing but not exactly. Swinging reminds me of being a kid.

It is strange that each town we inch through, with its estimated population, is someone’s home. A place that is so much a part of their bones, they can’t home anything else.

I want to suffocate your sadness.

I have found that the whites of your bones are so lovely, they should be carved into piano keys.

some people are just born unbalanced. They are just born hateful.

Look at me, leaving myself places. Living so lofty, so dusty— taking up so much space.

I don’t know how to be whole anymore.

for a moment I am full on movement.

His sadness comes in waves & sometimes, if the moon is high enough in the sky, secrets tsunami out of him & crash into the air.

I held sadness closer than my own ghost.

Voltage on our tongues, glows ballerina-witchcraft.

Honey, your hands are fluent in foreplay, all curves & a little bite.

I do the only thing I can do. Listen.

You can’t be the giant who moves the car & be in the car at the same time.

Sani (looking sad): Do the ancestors ever answer? Me (Moth): They sent me you.

You remind me, he says almost to himself, how nice sound can taste. We could thrive here.

Sani: You tell stories the same way I think you would dance. Sure & full & alive, alive. Moth: You sing like an oak tree. Slow & strong & measured. Sani: Moth, I want you so close, I can feel your laugh before it comes … but this is hard.

Sani: I am chipped china, you’re a kaleidoscope— pieces always shifting & growing.

Sani: You are certainly something entirely your own. Moth: What are you? Sani: A broken voice. What are you? Moth: Oh, I am the smoke & the fire. Sani: & the wave & the lighthouse & the match— you set everything ablaze.

According to Sani, there are four worlds & in every one I might leave him like everyone leaves him. In every one his mind is a cluttered attic with tiny clouds constantly storming & his pills sometimes help the sun poke through.

according to my grandfather, the ancestors linger close; if you listen, they can tell you the truth of all of it.

Every story as impossible as the next. All true.

According to me, temptation is a sin that Jesus forgot to write down.

The rock doesn’t know it is a symbol. The stars, staggered & graveyarding, don’t know they are constellations.

Sani winks. How do we know we are alive? I shrug. Because we can feel the wind.

Honey, all the clocks are against us.

It’s the size of West Virginia. Which is far too small … to be fair in any & every story.

You will know your story all at once or not at all.

The only place in the United States where four state lines kiss. Like four barefoot girls holding hands & circling a campfire. This entire region is a crossroads dripping with magic— the sandy dirt so vibrant with spirits, it glitters in the sun.

The land remembers Sani, Sani remembers the land. Because the land is me, Moth.

I can feel the Motherland cradling me.

Sani says, I would like to direct the stars. Which I think means, anything is possible.

I dream that on this land older than myth some sort of magic communes between us.

I trace his tattoos, trying to translate the untranslatable.

Yeah, you won’t if you don’t apply.

singing is sometimes too much truth.

But when you sing, Sani, the universe startles & listens. Your soul is lighte...

You’re no Icarus; you can write a new origin story with your violin voice.