'Elegy'

Elegy
~ composed by Alexandra Silber, Finalist for The Edwin Morgan Poetry Prize, 2003; Glasgow, Scotland ~

The moon has kidnapped the kidney of my lover. (Not the heart or soul or anything one might expect under these circumstances). Replaced haphazardly with a chunk of moon-rock counterfeit stitched zigzagedly with a white-hot needle and silver fishing line never cut. He is still attached to her!
“This explains why the Moon always follows me home,” he whispers.

Oddly, he does not long for the kidney only for the Moon Herself, who is slowly sucking life from that gash in his side, like fruit from a goblin market.

His skin once lithe and radiant has gone white, developing irregular patches of pale, slippery clay. (Sometimes I have to laugh because he really does smell like cheese…)
Every night he digs his knees in to the shore and stares at the sky, praying with his eyes, the hollows are intense and vacant; grey as a turned-off television screen, growing hollower.

I know the Moon will forget him.
I know she has seduced before.
I know she has filled her bowels to the brim with the organs of a million soulless, searching men wandering the cosmos in vain.

I will destroy the Moon.
I will conquer Her.
I will plunge my victory flag into Her milky spleen and gut her
like a chilled coconut.
Then, I will go to her valley of viscerals
fish out the grimy, forgotten kidney,
and eat it.
To spite her.
Because the wrenching is unbearable.
Because I want to taste their love;
be as close as I can.

We are two
Unutterably empty women;
The moon and I.