we all fall down slack-jawed to marvel at words

“Aphrodite’s thirst was never quenched; it was cruel and dreamy. It was certainly the most splendid kind of thirst.”

Before human beings possessed fire or tools or language, the moon had been their ally. It would calm people’s fears now and then by illuminating the dark world like a heavenly lantern. Its waxing and waning gave people an understanding of the concept of time. Even now, when darkness had been banished from most parts of the world, there remained a sense of human gratitude toward the moon and its unconditional compassion.

In the Thompson Grill, the counter radio was already playing songs about the heart, songs about women who let their men go as casually as a river through their fingers. The waitress with the tattoo gave him his coffee. The music this morning threw him across eras. He was eighteen again and he fell into a girl’s arms, drunk and full of awe during his first formal dance, painted moonlight on the ceiling, the floating lights through the scrims that bathed the couples translating them.

“You and I know each other in our bones,”

Nevada is wide and bleak enough to mock all human politics. Desert in winter. He gazes in secret as she drives. She’s seasick with awe.

“Witches are moon-birds, Witches are the women of the beautiful moon.”

“Moon, plum blossoms,this, that,and the day goes.”

“[…] and in longing she bites her tender mind”

“Why does the mind do such things? Turn on us, rend us, dig the claws in. If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Maybe it’s much the same.”

“Darkening twillight is a sorcery,”