The Daughter of the Moon

A cold white light illuminates my tragic path. I was greeted by the crooning of angelic voices. My feelings were a mix of anxiety and of excitement. I saw you at church today, I was seated beside you. I can somehow hear your silent prayers. Licking your erubescent lips each time you pause before falling into a deep chasm of divinity. I close my eyes to listen to your heart’s beating. My soul gravitates around you, pulling me towards the ravine hidden between this painful reality and pristine romantic possibilities. Your gasps for air became more inviting; soon I am consumed by a familiar longing. I wait for the sun to drown in the crimsoning seas marking the start of my forbidden love affair with you. It is only when darkness covers the skies that I can have you – hiding behind the swollen shadows of sinners.

The same verse over and over again. Never mind if it was three in the morning or that she had to be practically dragged by her mother to the emergency room. It was clear that she was here not simply because of a minor ailment such as a rising fever or an annoying sore throat. She was brought in because she had been acting strange the entire week.

The mother claimed that her daughter was convinced that their neighbours were talking about her and spreading wild lies to ruin her reputation. She had stopped eating, functioning basically, living and kept herself locked inside her room, sometimes wailing.

Earlier that night, she was restlessly pacing the floor, refusing to sleep and muttering to herself as if tormented by some unseen demon. She took a shower with her clothes on and stared, pacing the floor again, leaving tiny pools of water in her wake. Then she left the house, leaving the front door open and climbed onto a parked car. There she managed to squeeze herself under the backseat. She had to be pulled out kicking and screaming before being brought to the hospital.

I asked her why she left the house. After about a million years, she looked at me from the corner of her eyes and whispered, “They think they’ve won, but I’m smarter.”

“Who exactly are the people you’re referring to?” I asked, suppressing a yawn.

I stared into her eyes and inexplicably, sirens started to sound in my head.

“You think I don’t know what you’re trying to do?” she screamed. “I and the shadow are one. The chair is one of us. It’s in the air – the poison is in the air.”

She pointed an accusing finger at me and my heart jumped to my throat. There was a deafening silence, followed by a litany of expletives that bounced of the walls of the emergency room.

This is not a figment of my imagination. It really happened. In fact, it happens almost every day when I come face to face with another citizen from the other dimension, where fish have wings and trees grow teeth, where colours are heard and voices can be seen. She was one of them, children of the moon.

She wasn’t always disturbing. Often times I catch her dancing in front her mirror and singing, wearing her tiara and throwing confetti in the air.

“Have you been visiting the chapel again?” I asked, as I checked her badly bruised knees.

“Yes, I’ve been praying a lot lately. Every time I pray it rains and when I open my closet there are more coloured confetti in it.”

“I tell Him all my secrets. My dog died along with my secrets. She left me too.”

“Mommy said she will allow me to ride the plane if I get well. I will be well soon.”

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Let me tell you the story about this someone who saw through all my madness and instability. He who brought certain equilibrium into my life, amidst the chaos and the demons I valiantly fought. One chance I had stepped into, what I thought was something real. Story of my one love among a sea of sharks and de-boned sea horses.

He’s a pirate. A fearless one. The one who navigates bodies of seas as stormy and perilous as I am, not out of curiosity but for the sake of conquest, for something new, for something foreign, for something extraordinary.

He came with boldness borne out of his spirit and strength. He saw with keenness of his one eye the need to shield this and understand my mystery. And then he guided me to the safety of understanding, tenderness, devotion and esteem.

Only when my coast was teeming with life and vitality did he deign to venture to other lands. The better to know if I really could weather life’s tempests and floods. And for me to find out if I would be able to stay afloat.

It has been a torturous fortnight since I was cast into this sea of solitude and despair. My brave pirate is gone, along with him went my sense of time and my sanity. The realisation of my greatest predicament dawns.

When will you learn? A woman of that sort talks without speaking. She looks without seeing. She hears without listening. She cries without weeping. She seeks the company of no one but herself and the ghost of her long lost someone. At night, she converses animatedly with divine voices, for they alone can give her the solace she’s looking for. And the very same things she made light of, her incessant blahblahs, she can enunciates clearly in her mind: love, commitment, devotion, trust, promise…she can go on and on, if only she doesn’t fall asleep with a tear on her cheek and a sigh on her lips. Devoid of any rouge, I could swear she looks like me.

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Weeks later, a gentle tap prompted me to glance backward. I saw a familiar face smiling at me. I asked her how she was doing. She said she was fine and was about to leave the psychiatry ward.

“Have you been talking to yourself again?” She asked.

“I don’t know. I was talking to this girl in the mirror.” I replied.

“I heard you’ve been singing again.” she said. “It makes me smile whenever I hear you sing.”

“Thank you. Have you seen my suitcase? I have coloured confetti again. Mommy said some fairy put it there.”

“When’s the next blue moon?”

“I don’t know.”

“I hope it will be this month or this year so I can see him twice.”

“I told everyone that I saw him riding a boat to the moon that night, I never had the chance to say goodbye.”

“It makes me sad. I’ll show him to you. You’ll see; he’s real.”

“It’s time to take your medicine again. You promised you will try to get better. You don’t want to miss your flight now, do you?” She asked.

“Okay.” I responded.

“I feel sleepy; I’ll sing myself to sleep alright.”

“I’d rather live in his world, than live without him in mine. This world, is his, his and hers alone.”

“Doctor, my knees hurt.”