The moon is huge tonight. Its silver light creeps across my countryside, lurks in streets and bursts into houses. I know it does this just to piss me off.
Noise blares long into the night. It starts with the wails of toddlers dragged from glowing windows to beds by frantic parents. They’re joined by the scratching of poets’ pens and followed in turn by the desperate groans of their friends and partners. Long domesticated dogs add howling protests, as if recalling, through some dark magic of the light, times when their kind ran wild, before they were called things like Cuddles. No-one rests and, come morning, everyone is in a terrible mood. My bully, the moon.
This time though, it’s not a piss take. The next night the moon is genuinely massive, abnormally so. People are terrified. Those who can escape do so in rockets that climb quickly and cling to the moon’s dark side. As the moon comes closer, I see its pocked face smiling down at me. I send up waves in wet greeting. It’s been ages since anything bigger than an asteroid paid a visit. My buddy, the moon.
Before I know it, my seas have spilled everywhere, and there’s water soaking into the land. I can’t even tell which continent is which. Screams ring out from those scrambling to higher land. Another restless night. Great. My bully, the moon.
Then my surface falls silent. Silent! It’s been so long I’ve forgotten how good it feels. Was it some point in the Paleozoic? The moon shakes off the stowaways clinging to its back, sending a shower of humanity into oblivion. It touches the point of its Mons Huygens to my Everest in a celestial fist-bump. My buddy, the moon!
When the floods recede, the trees breathe a collective sigh of relief, filling the air with pleasant plumes of oxygen. I begin to feel my seas tingle with the anticipation of new life. I pray to my former residents’ gods that evolution takes it easy this time. Please, no apes, I whisper.
H. A. Piacentino is a new writer based in Glasgow, Scotland. His work is forthcoming in FlashFlood Journal and Night Sky Press. You can find him on Twitter @h_a_piacentino
