[Prose] She Stood on the Moon

2008-12-27 @ 11:21 p.m.

She stood on the moon with a handful of pearls and tossed them up into the darkness, where they hung like still rain, like stars. When she'd emptied her hands and the pearls glittered in the gloom, like teardrops, like glimpses of her sadness, she realized she'd let some slip away.

Down, down toward the earth, she looked, and she spread her wings. He was standing there beneath the moon with the pearls shining in his eyes.

But in the dead times when her heart was lead, she had pulled out all of her white feathers, plucked them out one-by-one, and so when she leapt off the moon, she fell. Plummeted, straight to the earth.

The world passed in a blur and it wasn't clear whether the man with the pearls in his eyes would catch her or let her be crushed by the sharp stones lined up like the teeth of the devil.