Suit Made of Stranded Moonlight

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

–Soren Kierkegaard

On my way through the bathroom I notice myself in the orange string lights that dangle down from the vanity. I see the bruise-y bags under my eyes. Even though it’s only a little after 5 in the morning, I look beat up, like some old time Serbian street fighter way past his prime.

A stroll down the predawn city street. A small bun and a little cup of strong coffee. Three cigarettes before I even cross the bridge on my way to work. Horse hooves clacking on cobblestones the way things were meant to sound. A couple black eyes on the man drifting through shadows. Two ashy black lungs waistcoating his heart.

How many times have I awoken to the smell of foreign scents? How many people have seen my silhouette shadowed on high alley walls? How can I tell if I have lived before this, wrapped in other in skins, hung off other bones?

There is a sense of other things.

Unseen lights in foreign windows that I have passed under before. Nicotine in the cracks of my teeth. The warm thick liquor of pigs blood from a solid glass; runaway droplets on my chin. Immense heavings of grief smash up inside of me/ plaster the wall/ as I hit the landing outside the kids’ bedrooms and turn to take the stairs in the dark. I sense my trivial presence being swallowed whole by infinity. As I descend the steps down into the Christmas lights I hang for vibe, it occurs to me that someone driving up Penn Street right now might catch a glimpse of me floating across my front door glass.

And what do they see?

Is it really the same person I see in the mirror?

Or is it someone else entirely?

I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. There are no cars on the road. Just a milk truck that rumbles by on its way to some farm out there in the dark. The driver is probably listening to music, looking at his phone, rambling through this torn-open night in the fleeting moments before another day comes barreling up over the ridge line.

I open the front door, step out into the cold in my boxers. I gasp from the shock. The boards under my feet are ragged with chipped paint, the wood is worn and needs fixing. I take my Suit Made of Stranded Moonlight off the rusted nail tapped into one of the posts. I slip it on as the stars watch me from light years away. The dogs are behind me in the house now, scratching at the paint on the metal door, trying to figure out what I’m doing out there, why they can’t be part of it.

I reach up and take a bag from under my eye. I hold it up, flat in my hand, aim it at the sky. It flutters off, a Wintering Moth, wings decorated with tiny skulls inside snowflakes. I snicker as it heads starward.

It shits a speck of moth shit in the streetlight glow.

When that shit dot hits the ground the entire planet explodes and is gone forever.

All hope is lost.

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