On Orbiting

How long must I stay a half moon?

A bisected face, 

a fractured whole, 

one part shadow, one part light

just shy of complete?

Because I never know, am I half empty, or half full? 

Either way envy eats through me; the ghost pain of an amputee

since nothing’s working out the way it’s suppose to be;

the laws of motion stuttered to a stop. 

The earth enervate, too consumed to spin,

too tired to support the weight of gravity,

leaving me alone to hug the crescent curve of sanity.

Wait in the hated calm, 

the beading sheen of suspension collecting on my upper lip. 

To be clear, 

It’s not vanity that leaves me longing to be a perfect circle of light.

But rather the need to finish the cycle, to see something through,

to become what I know I can be; instead of just tied to gravity, 

the endless orbiting, and law after law after law of motion.

My need to rise stunted, metered, tempered by the tides,

I am cut from the bone of unyielding law,

bullied by the brutality of interdependence; the hated truth that I can’t just will myself whole

when I am stalled, when I am halfway between here and there balancing the tight edge of what if,

curled around the muscle memory of hope. 

I don’t mean to complain, it’s just that

I’ve been waiting in the milky dark so long, squinting in this rationed light, hoping for change,

that I’ve forgotten what the next step is;

Should I rise, should I fall?

I don’t know.  I got tired of asking, tired of hearing my own voice echoing back.

So I learned to spoon the hard arc of containment like a lover, whispering into the crisp dark that Newton wouldn’t lie.

That I can accept the waxing and waining with cool detachment, release the dead weight of inertia and embrace this half life without longing for more. 

But the acrid burn of defiance eats through me even now, sorrow cracking me whole to half; 

and I wish I was a yolk. That I could drop through this brittle shell, fall like the sun from the sky.

-Joanie Tidwell