Moon-Tongue

The air tasted of dust and salt, a slow decay of shoreline memories. The town slept in a haze of silence, broken only by the skeletal creak of the old pier. Above, the moon hung full and wet, a bruised peach in the indigo sky, its glow so thick it felt like a presence. It had a mouth, that moon, or at least a tongue, and it licked the night with an overripe, sickly-sweet light.

It painted the abandoned storefronts in bone-white, stripped the familiar from them until they were no more than hollowed-out monuments. The windows became black, staring eyes, each one a memory I had tried to forget. I felt the light seep through my clothes, into my skin, and knew it was the same light that had fallen on her face the last time I saw her. It was the same light that had revealed the finality in her eyes, turning her familiar skin into the cold marble of a statue.

 That overripe moon-tongue had been there then, and it was here now. It tasted the damp earth, the rusted iron, and the lonely echo of my own footsteps. It was full, complete, and terrible, a promise of a harvest that had been taken long ago. It lingered, a slow and terrible sweetness on the back of the throat, tasting everything and leaving nothing in its wake. I walked in its glare, a ghost among ghosts, the memory of her a phantom limb that ached with every step. The moon had a tongue, and it was tasting me, too.