This is another blog serial. Ope.
In the beginning, when it would be me alone in the moonlight on the mountain, I pretended she was only for me. That only I received her light. Lithe and thin as it was, I would close my eyes and imagine a swelling warmth from it. Its hair-thin strands would become thick as trunks and I would curl myself within it. Tell myself I was safe, that it was substantial. But all I could ever truly feel was the silence of my father beneath my feet.
My eyes I kept closed because it ruined the illusion to be able to see. All the world lay within her. She spread herself everywhere, happily and without apology. It was not her fault I was but a bulb, squat and awkward. She would pool at the feet of others whose voices were sweeter, would curl her hands around petals of stark-white that only showed their faces to her. They lay gilded beneath her smile and she gave it to them freely, pleased that they only gave themselves to her. The moonflowers.
How I hated them.
During the day I found myself plotting against them, as they slept within their sheaths of green. Dreaming of the night.
Even the mountain would set me aside to gain more of her favor. On those nights I felt like smoke. I would make myself as big and wide as I could, expand my fingers and toes to cover more of the
handsome rock, and during the day he would let me. But as soon as my grandmother pulled herself to her place and set my mother forth, the mountain would make me small again. I’d have to balance on a root, knobby and uneven, because he wanted as much of his surface to be beholden to her.
During the day my banner of gold pleased him, but during the night it was only her silvery glow that would sate him.
How I hated them both, and how I loved them. How they loved each-other in spite of me.
Then there were the times when she did not appear, when her mother cloaked her away from us. I would curl into the coldness of the mountain, it only accepting me because her light was nowhere for him, either.
We were quiet in those times, we did not need to speak about it. I knew he treasured those borrowed moments as I did, but that he also secretly rejoiced when my mother returned and we were no longer alone.
“Daughter,” my mother called one day, her face full and alive. “Come to me.”
I did so at once and on tiptoe, almost afraid to turn my dull face toward her. So many others around for her to address, why now did she ask for me?
“Mother?”
“I’ve something to show you,” she had said.
And I came, as she wished, and witnessed a magic I hadn’t before experienced.
A beautiful fish like had never been, dropped from within her light, right at the waters edge near my father’s feet.
I stared at it, both entranced and afraid. I could not go within the waters for I could not swim.
Where my mother muted me, this being glowed. Each scale shone like stones, wet and cool. The light of my mother embraced it as with everything on the mountain but this was not as fierce. The weight of
her arms was more subdued, the water allowed for ripples of relief within her embrace. Unlike me who had spent an eternity nursing at that moonlight, the fish both existed within it and reflected it back out.
“Be well,” my mother said as she folded back into the bosom of the sea.
I watched her go, the last of her brilliance overtaken by the dark waters, and then turned back.
“Sister.” My brother, newly born, stood within the gentle waves. Tall and sleek, nothing more beautiful had ever come upon my mountain.
Our mountain.
I carefully waded to him and held him tightly to me. The salty water sucked at our feet.
The first of three gifts my mother would give to me.
This story, which I am breaking into an online serial to release every-other Saturday, is the original incarnation of my recently published poetry books My Mother, the Moonbeam and My Father, the Mountain. Posts related to each of those books are also included in this blog, offering additional information and insight to the poems. You can find more information on books, events, and the blog at http://www.faunalewiswrites.com
Fauna Lewis Writes 