To graze the moon with five-toed footsteps, 

and the blood rushing to animate the muscles 

as they function below the expected gravity. 

Though it is our function to be below.

To hold up the lattice of bygone corpses

and service, the others’ underhanded attempts

to climb this blood,

as it grabs the sky and marks it home. 

 

This is the mark of a hierarchy; 

A flag in a windless place that no one else can see. 

As we are the highest of all nations,

At the furthest of all places. 

 

Is this the peak? 

 

The white surface seems to glow with a heat, 

even though we cannot feel it under the many layers of skin. 

Maybe that’s just the reflection of the sun

as we are too

corrupted of the sun. 

 

That this makeup that builds up all bricks

 painting us all red; and the structure between us a sickly haunt 

of make-pretend power – 

we call it a human. 

 

And it feels enough to be unsatisfied, to hear

Of others saying that a blue moon is around us. 

Maybe it us that are blue moons, 

Made up of celestial spheres of empty glory.  

 

That we all are human is unmistakable, 

but which one of us alone is human? 

What name do you give to each of your children 

When they die before you can see them. 

 

As collective cells we persist 

through layers of rust and decay which form terraces of 

eroded craters left behind. 

The lapse of a name before it is given. 

 

Selene, Cynthia and Luna. 

Writer – Haran Thirumeni
Editor – Emma Li
Thumbnail – Photo by SHAMBHAVI SINGH on Unsplash