Dear full moon,
I love you best when I am menstruating (as I am now) because we can be bloated together. And if I could find someone to throw me up towards you, I’d use my longest fingernail to punture your reflection. Might there be blood? Blood like mine? Mine is at its deepest red. I can describe it as cherry-tongue-red. You can call it blushed-cheek-red right after you find out the woman of your dreams loves you back. What is your temperature, moon? Mine is grey. What is your mood, moon? Mine is cloudy with a chance of temper-tantrum.
Today, I rode my bicycle across the Manhattan bridge, wearing shaky legs and thick sweaty hair beneath my helmet. It was after being pronounced ill. Not like leaky-nose-ill or scratchy-throat ill. My skin is sad. My bones have been weeping. It’s difficult to make decisions, moon, when salt leaks from my sockets.
As I crossed that bridge, I floated above water. Subways were to my left and many other bicyclists sped along beside me because I pedal slowly, moon. How else can I digest all this beauty beneath me?
I am living out loud, moon, but I am living in secrecy.
You.
You are the biggest secret in the sky, lurking even in daytime. I see you winking at the sun, flirtatiously haunting the skyline.
I see you, moon. And I am doing my best to gather up your glow-in-the-dark reflection and reinterpret it. So, give me your best full-frontal gasp. I do not want a side view, moon. I do not want your sliver, your crescent, your sucked-in salutation. I want all of your robust, overweight self. Hem-less and scratched. You are brassy and brave, moon. I want some of that to stain me.
When the bridge ended, I was no longer in Brooklyn. Signs in a language no longer in English greeted me and street vendors boasted of their dim sum, rather than hot dogs. This felt more like home to me, I thought, as I dripped my cells onto the green bike path, sectioned off from the cars and traffic.
Aimee Herman 