moonlit mania
Abbie Doll
VOLUME III, ISSUE IV. BLUED REVERIE
A Pushcart Prize-nominated story
tonight i how-ow-owlll! with glee: it’s the wolf moon—the year’s first full—and the evening air is permeated with this delectable feeling of fullness. we’re outside sippin’ drinks and things feel reassuringly whole. look, i know we’ve just met and i jumped right to stargazing over your shoulder, but the night is ripe—pumpkin-plump with possibility…until i learn you don’t give a damn about mama moon, to which i make the mistake of admitting: i only agreed to meet because your shiny dome bears a hypnotic resemblance to my girl in the sky. i pour my heart out like the dirty bucket of mop water it is, while you do nothing but scoff at my filth. then you proceed to declare that poets ought to abandon their lunar endeavors—as if!—and i nearly skedaddle, but i’m comfortable here with my view(s). before i apologize for my abstraction, i disagree in a polite, gentle way, which is more courtesy than you deserve, but here’s the thing: i refuse to live a loveless life. trust me, i know it’s rude to ignore you, rude to stare at the night sky with Angel’s Envy, and ruder still to dream of diving into that celestial pool. “this,” you say, motioning at the black hole forming between us, is much too dense for new acquaintances. but we’re not strangers, i insist; we’ve lived under the same sky, the same atmospheric roof all our lives. you laugh and say, wow, someone’s getting tipsy, and i can’t help but chuckle ‘cause i’ve surfed off—wading through the mass of the moon, her soft-as-silk tofu legs parting like moses and his proverbial sea. but let’s get one thing straight: whatever she’s made of, it’s not brie, none of that gloppy goo for me. she’s my guardian orb, floating up there in varying layers of sweet, sweet secrecy, whose shifting visibility i will always admire & adore. listen up, bub. we both know this passion-free encounter’s a vehicle without wheels; we’re goin’ nowhere here with no atmosphere. and since it’s only a matter of time before you turn to leave, leaving me sipping my lukewarm Blue Moon, allow me my fantasies about you-know-who and how i’d choose to be perpetually pregnant if it meant i could carry little miss moon safe & sound in my womb, my nightlight belly aglow from her ethereal gleam. but even then, the water would someday break because the structural integrity of a womb is a temporary thing. and when it breaks, i’ll have no choice but to evict my love from the flesh we share while the labor-ridden me is forced to push & groan, strain & moan, sweat & mourn, bemoaning the loss of our corporeal connection, sobbing half my soul out when the doctor slices through this tether my body weaved, severing us from each other before i fade into the sad tattered shreds of a mother, struggling to shut the chasm you tore with your midnight departure.
About the Author
ABBIE DOLL is a writer residing in Columbus, OH with an MFA from Lindenwood University and is a Fiction Editor at Identity Theory. Her work has been featured in Door Is a Jar Magazine, 3:AM Magazine, and Pinch Journal Online, among others. Connect on socials @AbbieDollWrites.
Art by by Krista Lee Weller