As The World Spins

After another lonely year
she got cleaned up again.
And then, through all the steam
and fogged glass of the washroom
she saw the young moon
hang low like a mango too heavy
for its branch.
She let her wet hair stick to her shoulders
and rested one foot on the rim of the tub
so she could reach beneath her thigh
and squeeze a small lump that had festered
there for days now.
She took a moment, assessing all the angles,
and the pressure that would build up
from inside it, but eventually she got it,
and it burst against her palm,
and when she looked she saw her blood filled
all the tiny little lines throughout her hand.

She sipped a cold beer while she dried
and walked the wooden floor
between the window and the door
where she would pace around
and think about the old days,
when the moon had barely
known her quiet stare.
The pine trees in the court yard
were not natural but brought there
by the landlord, and she always thought
they didn’t fit, but they lived through
every summer without struggling.

Her dress slipped on so easily
without the water on her back,
and she kept her legs bare
because she wanted to be cold.
The walk downtown was effortless
from where she lived, and everyone
was scrambling to spend their time and money
their way for a change.
She stopped briefly on the way
and sat on a bench to check her phone
and touch base with the moon.
In a text she asked it why it always
looked down on her whenever she went out,
and three tiny dots appeared
and the moon replied
it just felt good to put its light on her.
She bit her lower lip to leave
the conversation there,
and kept on walking into Friday night,
to make some new friends not so far away;
like her old one up in orbit,
now so bored with being weightless
as the world spins.