Blue Moon
Blue Moon
You are blood in my veins
You make me feel alive.
-
It’s a blue moon this weekend.
They call it a second chance moon.
‘You’re supposed to think about something you’d like another go at.’
I say to my friend.
I’m standing in a bookstore
imagining the second chance I’d like
with someone I fell for
when the impossible happens-
and my blue moon walks in.
-
The world stops for a small moment.
And I think about everything that had to go right for two people three cities apart to spectacularly collide in this tiny moment right here.
In a city of 5 million
I'd gotten off a plane that wasn't supposed to arrive early
With a friend who wasn't supposed to come
And checked into a hotel
We weren't supposed to be let into.
With time to suddenly kill,
my friend took me to a bookstore I'd never been
And at exactly 11.07am
I'd thought of a boy I'd loved once
Turned around
and he was there.
He looks the same but older.
Like a cranky David Bowie.
Bluest eyes I’ve ever seen.
If I busted him open
A bunch of stars and angst would come out.
I feel him from three shelves away.
He’s a lightning bolt in a long coat.
Truth incarnate.
-
I have universes to unpack with this person.
-
But all I get out is ‘HEY.’
He looks at me with the kind of hate
That belongs in the books beside us
It cracks my heart in two;
My Blue Moon Cowboy’s got a glare like a gun;
Takes me out
And it’s a poetic showdown between ‘Personal Growth’ and Japanese manga.
-
‘I’m in town for the weekend- do you want to get coffee?’
-
He looks - really looks- and replies in so many colours I can see them in different dimensions.
'‘No.’'
And all the tiny stars that seem to hover around him flicker and go out
And fall to the floor.
I feel it in 15 places.
I’m a bad dog in a bookstore.
It’s enough for a few people to notice.
I want what we all want when something goes-
To know what happened to the bit of magic
We created when our worlds collided.
More than that I want the person.
Not the moment, but the second chance
I want the whole of the moon.
Forgiveness is a shot of hope in the dark.
All people ever want to see if they look back
Is evidence of real change.
And most people don’t look back.
I feel it in my throat first,
that embarrassing lump that creeps up when you’re about to cry.
Then the worst kind of tears spark up-
The kind you hate as they come out
Because they say
‘Bang bang, baby, you got me good.’
I hold it all in
until I leave the bookstore I wasn’t supposed to go to
Get back on a plane
Out of a city of five million
And up into the clouds
And beside a nice Japanese man
Who pretends not to notice
I let all the blue out.
And back into the sky.
