Leslie Wolter

Moon Madness


On nights of the full moon, Victorian women used to move their beds in front of the open window and moon bathe. They thought that the rays from the moon would soak into their skin and make it shine with luminescence. He looks like he moon bathes every night.

The moon forms a spout and pours liquid pearl into his skin. A little bit of it takes on a bluish tint and pools into his eyes. His head is white like a stone on the beach with stubblepokes like granules of sand. His fingers are long and thin, little crescent shaped nails. Blue veins visible just below the surface, snaking to his heart. What darknesses and lights are in that heart? He paints his fingernails black. He doesn't speak very often. When he does, his voice is thick and plush like velvet. There is that feeling of wanting to press my hands against his palm to palm and just stand there quietly. If you don't move, you can feel his heartbeat against your fingers. Hush. What kinds of things does he say? He looks so violent and intense, but he is playful. He plays word games and mind games. The former are definitely more fun than the latter, but silly me, I get off on the latter, too. He has a silver ring on his pointer finger that glistens in the sun. He is constantly spinning it around and around. I wonder what he is nervous about. His lips are full. He licks them a lot.

I watch him talking. I watch his tongue. His skin. It looks like there is a thin sheen of sweat covering it. I'll bet he tastes like salt. The first time you kiss someone there is a fire that starts at the point of union and laps its way down through your throat, through your heart, forms a burning circle in your lower abdomen, and licks downward. I am afraid of the fire and yet envision thrusting my heart into his flame and watching it be reduced to what is essential.

His eyes always sort of dart around from place to place when he is talking. An annoying habit, really. I want his eyes to land on mine and lock. Flutter-flush. . .he sweeps over me every time I allow myself the luxury of a thought. Does anyone else in the world ever feel this jangling twitching obsessive longing? The word longing didn't exist until I made the scene and saw his face. Then it bloomed big and self-important like some exotic night blooming flower.

When I talk to him there is a mumbling quality to whatever stumbles from my lips. My heart clutches and skips . . . a problem not unique to the situation, unfortunately, but certainly exacerbated by it. How can it be that a person can catch me in his orb and hold me there like some pitiful bug thrashing in the gelatinous threads of a spiderweb. His eyes are threads. He can untwine them at will and send them shooting at me. They wrap around and around and around and around me until I find it hard to breathe. Oh, he is beautiful. And the thing that is so amazingly marvelous is that he is totally unaware of how beautiful he is. Thinks himself rather creepy, if the truth be told. Moves his hands in a rather awkward, gangly fashion, as if they were stumps of meat that someone had tacked to the ends of his arms. Those long, spiderlike fingers landing here and there with nothing about the music of the spheres to guide them. They are discordant . . . if they were to land on me? The first time I think I would want him to reach with unsteady purpose and give my hand a gentle pat. After I had said something hinting at the tunnels that I have inside of me . . . just a gentle, reassuring pat from his hands would be enough.

Other fantasies have those hands landing elsewhere . . . doing other things . . . finding a harmony out of the discord. There is this innocent awkward quality to him. . .maybe he would look down and really see me.

Maybe that is what I long for most of all. When I think of his lips they are lighting in the hollow of my throat, and staying there. Forever. It would be rather difficult to get around, admittedly, but well worth the extra effort. Yes, I am a pitiful romantic. I don't just feel passion. It becomes me and I become it and there is no linear division. . .every breath I take is panty and throaty and full of insatiable longings. Like a panting dog, really . . . and as laughably pathetic.

When someone becomes a part of your anatomical structure . . . unbeknownst to you, he insinuates himself into the cilia lining your lungs and he undulates with every breath that you take in. His moistness clings to every breath you expel . . . it hangs in the air thickly, reluctant to move on. Sometimes you just want to scream the thoughts of him away . . . cannot FUCKING deal with one more glossy image of him superimposed upon whatever mundane detail is engaging your attention at the moment. He and his moon kissed skin.

If you lick someone in the same spot repeatedly for a long time, would you make a dent in him? A small, smooth concavity formed of the intensity of your desire to impress yourself irreversibly upon him. Like the wind and the water lick the earth and leave their impression in the form of deep profound canyons, craggy plateaus . . . is there an element of desire in their eroding? Is love a fancy or a feeling? Love is a sickness. Moonmadness. I love you most mad and moonly . . . and I love myself while I am loving you so madly and moonly and mutely and myopically. I look at you and am astounded by the fury of my feelings. Does that make it any less real?

How to move beyond these mad musings . . . to show you how I feel. Imagining giving you these lines and watching your eyes move across them. Watching the words infiltrate you in places I can never reach . . . the places I love about you most of all . . . your brain, your heart. Watching as you register, as the comprehension dawns that this is no ordinary crush to me. How can I make you see that when the halls are filled and swarming with mindless chatterings, they are empty to me because you are not in them. How futile this passion is. My skin is all around me, imposing its limits. Let me shed it and melt into you . . . in through your tear ducts, your pores, your unguarded openings where an uninvited guest like me can move in and stay. Let me be the moon that your skin absorbs and intensifies in the shining.