She is the word signifying a moment in time, darkly scanning the heavens for a release from sealed lips, the rough winds we use to push her through rooms of you’s– she suddenly halts on the ends of our tongues, just behind the top row of teeth, and lingers. She is the word for an unexpected brightness, an inconsistency measurable to within a second of our blotting her out with our giant fat asses, just trying to scoot between. She is the name of that pull we sense when we stand at the ocean, or on ships, at night.

What she wants: to know her name. She is already advancing across the sky







Be the subject of gravity and the object of looking longly. You are held within the same fabric as she, but you have a different name.

Forget about your own name. No one cares.

We shouldn’t shy away from things just because they are clichés…but maybe we can do better.
She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes, that is we will see her first upon the mountain’s peak. And we will feel her entering our throats, and we will want all at once to speak her as a noun and verb, qualifier and particle, adverbial and conjunction.







Oh she is the MOON!! The moon. The moon. The moon. Of course she is the moon, she is the name of the moon. The name of the moon. But if the moon is a thing, and its name is “moon,” and if she is this name, then “moon” is not her name. Her name is what names the moon. I am only just arriving at this thought. I’m sorry if you’ve been waiting long.







She shall have to look for a driver’s license, a cable bill, a tag in her underwear.
She shall have to lean in closely to hear—causing massive tidal disturbances, shipwrecks, tsunamis, the submersion of archipelagos in the west—but she must ask us.
She must expand her place on the page.







She sits moonzing on the parchment. Nouning her every moonly position. It moons a dance.







She begins to wonder if the way to learn her name is to follow the distinct abstract forms scattered in the ocean after a tremendous run upon the rocks. That is, we do not see her wondering. We see her recognizing the shapes in the water, then we see her diving in after what looks like the mainsail.







She is already wet, we cannot wet her a second time. Perhaps it hangs in the bubbles that float relatively freely above the word of her name, and the words of the names of everything. She is the moon as sister, she is the moon of memory, how many copies of her have we seen? She is the sad white moon. She is the moon of wolves, and so the moon of vicious men, and so the moon of blood, and so the moon of origins, sustenance, regrets that we chew and tear.







[You missed her.] Well she was there. And she looks like your mother and she is very concerned about all the things you want in life. She told me so. What’s important to you? Children? She told me she loves her children. Not only that, she loves your children, and she will do anything to keep your children safe. You can understand that can’t you? If I had only told you that she remembers her daughter by opening a blue diary to the page marked by a crushed violet, and reading aloud the words “tomorrow is almost here, and then we’re diving into the ocean, but I can’t sleep,”—that she keeps this diary with her and rarely opens it during the day—well then you could not have managed to be her, not even for a moment. She is making models of herself out of Styrofoam, and plans to display them for everyone. She won’t need to leave the house ever again, and we can be satisfied for a while, until the novelty wears off.







We will have her reach into a hat and pull out a name like “Julia.” We will have her smile and hold it close to her heart. We will have her warm and understood. Do you understand? She will finally know the mystery. And we can forget about boats and bubbles and moons, oh especially moons! And just focus on how this moment can be placed on a shelf, in a book filled with other such moments, someone having scribbled a caption next to our faces.

It reads: “Not Windows!”







Why, she wonders aloud, the less like my body is my body the more it rests. The moon is not as bright as a blue candle. The moon does not fall on, look on, shine on, shine on. Moon is moon. Moon = moon. Now relate this.







And so she is the name of the moon. Julia, or something. She learns this by mistake, but she was also trying to find her name. A happy accident. Just like her children. All of whom need names immediately.







She tried to kiss her son, but he was cold.
She buried her daughter in fire. Julia the mother, moon the devourer.
She wants to be.
And when we comprehend existence, the scene will end. Or else when we are finally denied that comprehension. Either way.







We do not believe in dreams, only things that are like them. She is after all only a symbol, her name only a metaphor, not even a substance. Yes, this is very much like a dream.