[twwm] nursery log

Losing myself was an uncomfortable process. ‘Uncomfortable?’ You may ask. ‘You were nothing but a log?’ Well. Do you not think that the door lovingly carved and oiled and painted does not feel? Do you think the simple box holding the rings given and exchanged between lovers does not glow with joy to give them what they have sought?
Of course I felt; in the muted knowledge of the seeds and animals within me - in the way those separate from the outside feel.

I lost myself in many different ways. I lost myself in the overstimulation of the world after I had been transformed, in the aching, desperate pleas I must’ve given off through my microflora. I rippled the water in a way I could not have known, and caused her to come to me.

I have bathed in the moon’s light and her gifts, but I have forgotten how her cold touch feels. The moonbeams of her hands combing through the grain of my body felt like cool, refreshing rapids, and they soothed me - what there was of me gravitated towards her, aching for soothing and comfort I felt in the hands of the moonlight.

I lost myself to her.

I lost what I had of myself of her - the base emotions of knowledge of a world I could not yet have was promised in the kind gaze of the moon, like a lover who could never touch me. I wanted her to hold me in her arms, glowing and bright with light not her own, light reflected back from an inferior sun. The light of the lantern of the one who turned me reminded me of the pregnant glow of the moon, and I reached for it.

Still lost. Still alone.

The moon has no warmth of her own, only cold and clammy flesh like one who has left us; like the remembrance of a life well lived. I wanted her so badly, to touch to hold to feel - I wanted to be like a life well lived, to have lived. I wanted to be something instead of nothing, and so I whispered to the moon every night I saw her marred face, begging and pleading with her to give me more than what I was, than what I had always been.

This was foolish; as am I. The moon cannot love, and if she could, she would not love me. I am a tired old soul who has seen too much life without ever living one of my own, and I knew that this clouded goddess of the night sky could never love me.

But I fell for her, and keened and cried when the stars took her from me - shattered and fragmented like the holes in my body. This was the loss of myself, what I had, the belief that I could be taken into the arms of someone like her, and cared for. I thought she would love me, and knew it so falsely, so deeply within every worm-burrow that I tricked myself into a love that never existed.

I let her false light wash over me, a cleansing light of love unknown, and wanted to purr with happiness. I was in love with the idea of being what I was not; in love with the idea of the ability to love, so much so that I lost what little I had.

Do you love the moon too, like I did? Is she your deep heart, buried in murky underwater burrows, where the frog spawn twitches and the fish sleep and dream seaweed flavored dreams? Is she the aching in your gut like she is mine, a muscular hurt whenever you move, so you are forced to still yourself to survive?

The night I lost the love I never had was the night I was transformed. The moon had hidden herself from me, cloaked herself in the clouds and the starlight, like lace and beads covering her form. She was beautiful to me in every way, and I did not understand why she refused to come out and see me this night.

When I finally saw the light of the one I thought was her, I clung to it, grappled for it against the inanimate form that I was trapped in - I hoped the moon had come down from her sky.

You don’t know how lonely space is, or how the stars grieve. They speak to each other in low, hushed tones, and not to the moon, because she is not worthy of them. I gave her a home in my heart, and I thought she was coming to fill it, to live in the invented love of my mind.

Instead, after I had touched her light for the very first - and last - time, I found myself looking at bright purple eyes, a curious face, and twitching whiskers.