Moonrise Kingdom

A Story by Slow Leak

I meet Liz's boyfriend and we spend the afternoon on his roof. This was the day I wrote the poem Worship.

It was a sunny Saturday, but you’d never be able to tell from the inside of my Chinatown Nest. Rays of sunshine warmed the frame of my bedroom windows. My phone vibrated underneath me, I must have fallen asleep on it again. Liz is calling.

"Hey I’m thinking about having a little party up on Nick’s balcony today, you in?"
"Sounds great, I’ll be there soon."

I pick up some small bottles of Sake, (enough to call it a tasting,) and a few seaweed sandwiches from a new store called Yaya on the way to the Grand street station. I ride the 2 train up to 96th St, a quick walk and I'm waiting for the Upper West Side elevator, armed with sunglasses and my Chinatown delicacies.

“Welcome to my home!” Nick announces, open arms invite a hug.

I smile and hand over my treats. And what a home it was, but more like a jungle. I spent the day drinking the sunlight from the greenest rooftop I've met in Manhattan.
"Nick has lived here his whole life." Elle tells me as we maze through the terraces of the prewar building.
"It's true." He chimes in from behind, condensation bubbles on the outside of the glasses he carries out to us. "Almost all of the plants are edible. When I was a baby, my mom figured it was best to only have things I could eat around. And now it's great for cooking."
Elle walked me around and introduced me to each flavor and texture. We rubbed camphor on our skin, and I tried a full, overwhelming scallion blossom. The sun kept moving through the sky.

"This place is organic." She tells me as she points to a tiny weed growing from the crack in the terra-cotta, "A bird s**t here last week, now it's a plant."

I watched Elle water the plants and they sang and danced. The wind moved through each in different ways; it moved over her tongue as a beckoning whistle to purple finches, and through the plants' leaves as a rustle.

I wished I claimed a God to pray to, in the presence of so much glory. I thought about my form of worship, one more devious- of the human body. The connecting to my world through pleasure, filth, and fluid. And it inspired another poem, I do hope you like it.

-Worship-

There must be two to worship

A deity, and peasant

She sits upon fine linens

While he beats himself as penance

The load it brings, a gift redeeming

Sacrificial blessings

Yearning for a full release

And atonement through emissions

“Worship me on hands and knees

The God inside us both

Is easy to see, as you will see,

When my c**t covers your nose.”

Be baptized in Holy dissolve

To gain prophetic, orgasmic visions

You can bury lust, but soon enough

It will be resurrected.

She looks at me, “So do you get it?”

“Yea, I get it.”

Nick brings out some of the sakes from the fridge. He sits next to her on the couch, and lights a joint first, but he has his cigarette waiting in his lap. She is wearing his mother’s robe. It has palm fronds printed on salmon-orange. The terrace is quiet, except the wind.

“So, when I don’t come home on Saturdays, this is why. This is where I’m at.”

“Yea, I get it." I reply.

I wait for the joint to come around, and then I excuse myself to the bathroom. As I’m walking in, I stop in the living to look at the turtle cage. Liz had followed me in.

“I really like this turtle.”

She starts ducking and bobbing her head up and down. It mirrors her and she snorts little laughs. Barking at it.

“She and that turtle love that game. They have a lot of fun.” Nick laughs and joins us. We form a rhombus. Liz and Nick bleached in blacklit sunshine, across rom me and the turtle.

"Excuse me."

I smile and head to the bathroom. I see my missing elixirs piled high on his dirty cabinets. As I’m peeing, I fidget with the broken scale on the bathroom floor. I press a lot of buttons and nothing.

"Whatever," I think to myself, "I don’t really care what I weigh anyways."