Moonbright
First a twinge that something’s not quite right,
like when your sock twists inside your shoe
or your hair is blown across its part.
Off-kilter, I pat my pockets,
count my kids, assess my life.
Then a dull heaviness,
Not quite pain.
Then emotions swell to the surface,
ooze out with every touch.
I walk gingerly through the day
trying not to brush against anyone.
If I do, and you are soft,
I’ll weep.
But if you’re prickly I will burst,
heave and hurl and rip,
as angry at the enemy occupation
that renders me powerless
as I am at you for daring to exist.
And then the pain.
A scraping whine,
a sawing, serrated sneer of chalkboard scratch
dragging downward
settling to churning thrum.
I try thrum
to get thrum
my mind thrum
to clear thrum,
to e- thrum
ven see thrum
at all.
Werewolf,
moon-chained.
At fourteen, dizzy with dirty shame,
I asked my mother how God could
curse half his children thus.
“You’ll thank him,”
she said, “the day your first child is born.”
And, after all,
I did.
Four times, I finished God’s sentence,
delivered myself from friendly occupation.
Forty years times twelve months times five days
I’ll think of those messy, squirming, god-bright souls.
Forty years times twelve months times five days.
God-bright.
Darlene lives in South Jordan, Utah with her five guys and a cat. She serves as the secretary for the Association for Mormon Letters. She recently took up yoga.
