Unpublished?

The night’s sky struck a precious medal – not the chipped moon, not even a memory of the war’s bomb blossoming before its due time.  No, it was my long lost love returning from outer space in a growing globe of golden light.  The approach, though, was not its growth.  The growth, you see, was itself swelling towards a motion that was only one strut down from Creation.  Depends what you believe.

            In the war, doodlebugs droned shoreward, primed to cut out at the merest hint of collateral carnage, pre-planned or a ready-in-waiting carnage – flesh already opening like flowers rather than wounds.

            I loved Maude.  She had died in my youth, before we even had the chance to hope of a long life of marital bliss.  Diseases were more common then and death was almost your friend.  And now, she was returning to me.

            I recall her voice, even today.

            “How about the dusting…?”

            The words didn’t matter.  It was the way she told then.  Off the cuff.  Polished off.  As if true love was merely a cherry-bite away.

            My voice was always equally strange – even now.  To hear my younger voice was natural, though, natural as the darkness widening its coinage, its mint of moments.

            “I love you, Maude.”

            She shrugged and would continue burnishing the grate.

            Today, I’m older, if not to say, old.  Maude has been star-hopping … and I’ve simply been staring and hoping, if words can possibly convey more than they actually mean.

            I wait for the craft to open its doors.  It has become the Earth itself.  Itself.  The word is pregnant with possibilities, a new currency.  It and self. A miscegenation? A carnation in God’s lapel? 

            It is Midnight.  Moon’s Noon.  And Maude, my sweet, disembarks, duster in hand…

            I laugh until laughter’s spent.  Music to my heirs.  Moratoriums of Mirth.