Waning


I shot a moon while you watched,
it was shaped like a bowl of rice.
I dipped my finger into the grain-glass
fragments of the moon and funny thing,
did you know rice and blood
float different than water in no gravity?

I shot a moon, not just a moon,
certainly not your moon, my moon,
the dead moon, body moon, not a real
earth moon; it was pretend anyway. I shot it
because you told me I had to. Choices. Fate.
Because rice is sticky like blood. Because
when we die it will be under somebody
else's gravity. Rice soaks up everything
as fast as water. Even memory.
Did I used to have a moon? A body?
Blood is funny the way it floats.

When I'm blacked out, it's like being

in outer space; you have to push off
something to get to something else,
like language, doors with hinges and locks
like blood pushing off itself to move itself
around your body, like alcohol in
blood in my body pushing around;

alcohol inside of blood is probably similar
to blood outside of gravity. Did
you know

rice soaks up liquids real nice,
so when I killed my own moon,

(when you used my hand
to pull the trigger)

the rice soaked up all the blood
and dried out my red voice

before I could even scream.

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Conor Harris is a writer from Idaho.