My mind is showered with resolve as step by step I get closer to the end of my journey. Here I am, unclothed with a knife in my hand, carrying out the will of a warrior. Of a poet.
It is a painful endeavor, to walk barefoot on the Moon. Myriad pains shoot up one’s foot as the unknown tears into your flesh. There is no bleeding on the Moon, my father used to say, only the pungent smell of sweat and alcohol, mingled with dust and age. Silver dust and age of powder. My father had always loved to muse into the lyrical—he was the sort of man that delved into the essence of accounts and truths. He unmasked them and left them bare.
My father died while he lived.
To walk on the Moon, a man needs three things, my father’s voice echoes from the void: “A man needs his wits, a man needs his will, and a man needs his feet.” At the puzzled looks he’d receive he’d quickly spit out, “Would you not need your wits to will your feet to stay planted on a monster? That is all the Moon is, a monster! It is our Mother for monsters. It is immense and mythical, yet available for our eyes to nourish on it. All monsters are heavy and colossal, they are cold and unforgiving—traits the Moon has had since before the first man breathed. Once they dreamed, hah! Man has fed off of the mysteries the Moon supplies, has assigned ridiculous value to its emptiness. I tell you, you can breathe on the Moon, your monster, if only you will yourself to love it as much as you do air and water. You can take it so far to make it so that only the brutal sting of its sharp rocks will cause you pain—for it will be your only danger. The naked body can survive so long as the mind is clear of all egotistical thoughts. Only a poet can survive on the Moon,” he’d assure.
“Old man!” I shout into the emptiness, “I do not think of myself as I tread on your monster, but of you and your wits and will and feet! This is for you, old man, this is my show of love and faith to you.”
There is no wind to sift through my hair, there is no chorus to enhance my actions’ value, there is merely me and the stars. I shine among them, now.
His words, my father’s, had transformed my thoughts into the sublime. He was a true poet, he was able to look profoundly into the ordinary and extract from it a light so pure that no eyes could survive gazing into it. Only ears were able to not suffocate from its beauty. Perhaps a fraction of his gift escaped into my own soul, but I am nowhere near his own prowess.
“Do you see these flowers, son?” he once asked me. “They are the very tears of an angel, which are so strong that they grow by themselves, for once an angel has experienced sorrow, it is eternal and beautiful. This angel, he is here right now, with us, and his tears are fresh. They will always be.” At this his own tears had started to flow. “It is so painful to smile with the weight of ages pressed upon your eyes, yearning to break free.”
His soul was wise and old beyond his years. Before he had even known how to talk, he would stare ceaselessly into every item he could find—he would break into its very soul and learn its secrets. “A knife,” he used to say, “is the will of its carrier. You can whittle, can cook, can mirror, can write, can open, can cut and find many other infinite uses for it, including taking a life. It is such a dangerous tool, the knife, yet so essential. Our lives mimic the knife. Never forget this.”
“I won’t,” I say as I place the knife in my hands over the silver dust below me.