another verse about specificity

The moon has come to rise again tonight, as it always does, yet I still find myself relieved. I wonder, every now and then, will there come a day where she and the sun stop their cycles? When they just disappear, away to somewhere else? Deep into space, far from prying eyes? I suppose it won't happen anytime soon. Scientists have said that we still have some million years before the sun blows everything to bits, at least.

The plant I keep on my dresser, the swiss cheese plant (though it only has a couple leaves with the characteristic holes), was looking droopy and sad yesterday, so I made sure to water it a bit more heavily then and now. Just to make sure. The leaves don't feel quite as limp anymore, and a new one is set to unfurl soon, too. I hope this one has holes. Holes mean the plant is happy, content with its environment. One time it put up a new one with no holes, completely solid, and I felt just a little at a loss. Like thinking, what more can I do for you? Like, what do you need from me? I'll give it, if you'd only tell me.

Somehow, the swaying of its dinner plate leaves in the air from the fan reminds me of the ocean. It's been years since I've seen the water, much less dipped my toes in it and the sand, and I think I miss it. I used to tell my parents to leave me behind when they'd take trips south to go stay by the sea for a week or a bit more, because I hated that house with nothing to do, none of my usual food, none of my electronics. Only the sound of the seagulls from less than a mile away, and the stony, hot roads to get to them. I would always bring an old water bottle with me, and fill it with seawater after I'd waded through the dunes to get there. I'd sit on the bench on the walkway when we would head back, and I would wash all the sand off my heels, out from between my toes. If I felt especially strong, I'd walk home with it stuck to my soles and hose off my feet and my flipflops when I got back.

I don't particularly like sand, but something in me hungers for that feeling of washing it off my feet again. Searching for seashells along the coastline like when I was younger. When I would bring them home and display them all across the kitchen counter until it was time to make dinner, when they were set aside, careful not to shatter any of the fragile ones. I hunger for the salt in the breeze when I'd sit out on the wrap-around deck, on one of those plastic chairs, holding a glass of orange juice in my hands tightly, like a newborn something. Like something too easily broken. The only salt I've tasted, in these years I've been inland, have been my own tears. I try not to shed them too often. If only because I don't want to be reminded.

Nights like these, they're not something to be taken for granted. Even if it feels like every night is like this nowadays. I get up while it's barely still morning, I brush my teeth, I have a thrown-together breakfast. I shower if I'm starting to stink, or if my hair is shiny with grease. I never contemplate like others do, under the unceasing stream of warm, softened water; I wash my hair with dandruff shampoo, and I don't think about it. I soap up my legs, my arms, my breasts and my back, and I don't think about it. Impossibly little, miniature zits have begun to pop up along my chest and my shoulders, and I wonder when my body decided I was sixteen again. The mountain range of tiny, baby bumps could feel like toad skin. In the rain of the shower, I imagine being small, small enough to sit on only inches of the bathtub. I close my eyes and think about catching flies and other bugs with my tongue when I'm hungry. Being held by curious kids in the summer hunting for tadpoles in the forest creek, then peeing in their hands and making them scream when I hop away. I place a hand at my womb; I feel a little hungry. I imagine a world at the bottom of a pond, skimming waterbugs off the surface for lunch.

I've remembered to take my evening medication after having dinner tonight, so I don't need to venture downstairs until morning comes. I lie on my back in bed, and I hold a novel above me just close enough that I can make out the words without my glasses on. It's a little hot, even with the fan running, but it is summer, which has come with all the usual humidity and sweltering temperatures. Another plus for the nighttime; temporary solace from the unfettering heat of the sun. She doesn't know what it means for it to be too hot outside. How could she, when she's always burning herself from the inside out, boiling to the touch? I wonder if that makes it hard for the moon to be intimate with her. Maybe she wears heatproof gloves. Maybe the moon's hands are so calloused she doesn't feel it anymore. Mine are too, but I still hiss when I nick myself with a knife. I wonder what I've scarred and calloused these palms for so much, if not for the sake of someone else.

I remember reading a story, where everyone was two people at once. There was male/male, female/female, and male/female. Then the big guy came along and sliced everyone neatly down the dotted line in the center, so everyone was just male or female. It's supposed to be a story about how we're all searching for our other half, but I don't feel like I need anyone else. I feel like the last male/female on the planet. Maybe I am.