Divorcing The Moon

Fingers found their way inside through the slight crack in the door.  I was horrified when I realized what I must do.  I could see the wedding band on her third finger.  I recalled putting it there myself just over a year ago.  My God!  She was the most perfect, beautiful thing I had ever seen in that white dress, her hair pulled up in a thousand bobby pins.  Her face, light blush and mascara.  Nothing gaudy, just enough to highlight her deep green eyes.  It was the only example I had ever experienced when time slowed down exactly when I wanted it to.  Two hundred fifty people vanished into a distant reality that was, most definitely not the two of us.

I kissed her mouth as if it was to save my own life.  She kissed mine and my life was saved.  forever, I thought.  Forever,  I knew in that moment.

But that was a very different moment than this.  A different time in a very different world than this.  When vows and promises could be kept, when words like forever could be believed.  Even then I should have known what a poison word it was.  

We believed back then, in the old world.  We believed in love, in fate.  We believed in hope and goodness, in promises, impossible to keep.

Back then, the full moon shone upon soft, still waters to light lovers' midnight rendezvous, kisses stolen in cool, fall atmosphere.  Fool times of blindfolded liars and thieves, fallen for the tin-majesty of a cursed satellite.  A single, staring eye spreading infection to all upon whom it gazed.

Not a changed world.  No, the same world under closer inspection.  But we were children when we believed in things.  When we could make, and keep, promises.  The moon had set upon us a hardness, and that hardness had forced us to grow up and see all that our childishness had allowed us to happily ignore.

That god damn moon and its gravity!  Compelling her to gaze upon its madness.  To give in to its pull.  Compelling her tidal forces against this door, to enter and devour me.  Compelling me to let her.

Enough!  Enough of this foolishness!  Retrospection was a luxury from that other time, before she and so many others had stared into that diseased moon, been pulled in and come back as something different, feral and undeserving of pity!

I lowered my shoulder and pressed hard against the door.  Finger bones cracked and blood dripped.  One last shove and the sound of the door-latch clicking.  Her fingers fell to the floor.  For a moment, they continued to wriggle, until they did not.

Carefully, I picked up the finger with its ring.  I stared for a moment at it, let out a small laugh, removed the ring and tossed the finger into the blaze of the fireplace.  I quickly tossed in the other three, sat back against the door, listening to her slump down on the other side, probably licking her wounds with thirst. I waited calmly for the moon to set.  Waited for the sun to rise.  Waited for her to wake up, the amnesiac.

Waited for a month to pass and the moon to become full once more.

Next time with a better plan.