On the Wall

Think of that girl on the wall. She’s sitting there. Her hand is in the cold cold water. It’s trying hard to fracture the moon, that moon that has been full, never mind what we see, the full full moon for thousands of years. Millions really. And this girl, on the wall, is trying to fracture the moon in the cold water. That is maybe her problem. You can’t fracture the moon. She tries to remember real things. Like the feeling of her baby’s heft when she lifts him from the crib. The longness of relatively new legs. She thinks if these legs are so heavy and sturdy after two years, how does she think she could fracture the moon who has been here for millions of years.

When lying in bed, she curls herself up and stares at the wall in front of her. Not this wall she was sitting on, with the history of women coming to lean over it and gossip, but the nondescript green wall in her suburban bedroom. She is starting, not seeing anything and willing herself to not see anything. Especially herself. Someone whispers in her ear that she is good, a good person, and she shuts her eyes then, tightly, as if shutting her eyes will allow her not to hear as well. She hears her child call to her, “Mommy, mommy” as if love is a couplet. Is love a couplet? Can love be single? Can love come in ones? She wonders about this question all day long. She looks up at the gray sky. Why is the sky grey in the day so she can’t see the sun, but clear at night for the moon to come down and look at her with his insistent questions?

She looks at the pictures of people she knows on the computer. Are they are all as happy as their smiling faces seem? They are all thin and seemingly rich and content. No one posts as a status update: “I am depressed as fuck.” “John says, “This life is wearing down my further every day until I might just blow away.” Instead there are quips about birthday parties and children’s diapers. The girl looks especially hard at the photos of those who moved far away, who live in new places surrounded by new languages. Do they have something she didn’t?

When she was younger, and not that much younger, her parents friends made comments about her, she was special. Going places. One friend in college told her she knew she’d be famous. Now she can’t find a job and stares at the wall in the half darkness at night. Dreams of putting her hand into cold fountains and fracturing the moon. When is she even going to take out a bow and arrow and shoot at the damn moon? When is she going to stop being lost and get out the map. When is she going to open her eyes?