Not everyone gets to hold the moon.

You must sail very far to reach it, 

all the way to the Balcony of the Sky.

Then you must set down your ship of fog

by the Moonkeeper’s window.

“Come out,” you will say, your heart ticking–

a little like a timer, and a little like a bomb.

“It is time, dear friend, to call down the Moon.

For the night is sweet and bright–

and all about the Moon

are rings of haloed light–

But can it really be the Moon, by right, 

if we’re not there to hold it?”

Then out he’ll come, feral-faced,

socked and sandaled he shall greet thee,

his stubbled cheeks dripping dewdrops,

his disused voice a choking smoking carburetor.

He’ll press warm palms on mist-silvered glass

and through the melting doorways meet you.

Then, off you’ll go, and with a howling and a yowling, 

with tipped back faces and bared throats, 

you’ll cry out to the moon, 

AWOOOO, ARUUUUU,

(And so on and so forth, etc.–

it is only through such crude and unsubtle gestures 

that we, the denizens of these phantasmagoric lands,

may keep our housing prices low.)

Then down she’ll come, nearly hurtling,

dressed all in bone china, eggshells, & finest fishbone.

Do not fear, for you shall catch her–

and will swaddle her in your ship’s sails,

and hold her tender softness against your monstrous metronome,

and somehow

—the true miracle—

she will sleep soundly.

Behind you, the Moonkeeper will lean forward,

his whiskers quivering,

as you spitclean a bit of comet off the Moon’s cheek,

as you slowly inhale the gardenia-sweet scent

of her warm, pearlescent temples.