“Blood Moon, show me what you see. Connect me to my blood.”

I chant these words during the eclipse to the Blood Moon on the cold April night.

I wonder if the Moon has the power to connect me to my children. I want to see what they are seeing and doing during the eclipse so many miles away.

I keep chanting and watching the moon gradually change hues. Doubt creeps in along with the cold. Maybe this is an insane plan. After all, it is the middle of the night, and I have to work in the morning. Perhaps it will be best to go back to sleep in my warm bed.

My doubts stop when I notice laughter in the distance. A party? I turn my gaze from the blushing moon.

I am in the woods. It is cold and damp. I am coming toward the laughter. I see figures around a campfire laughing and drinking.

It looks like young and beautiful people around a campfire. They are drinking. In excess. Each one holds their own large bottle, swigging from the bottle like gorgeous pirates. Dancing and laughing with their bottles of booze around the fire.

Some begin to drum.

The beat of drums, smoke from the fire and cigarettes and pot wafts by. Loud drunken laughter. I can’t see the people clearly. They are polluting their young and vital bodies without a care. Killing themselves from the inside out.

Some gypsy pirates dance only with their bottles. Some with a partner. But always holding and sipping from a bottle or dragging smoke.

I am getting closer to the group now. I can make out bits of conversation over the laughter. They talk of food and wine and politics. They criticize and make jokes, each trying to out do the other. It is a show.

Some have taken clothes off. Muscled tattooed bodies. Colored scarves twirl in smoky moonlight.

One of them is in the center. I catch my breath. It is him.

He is the most beautiful. The most drunk. The highest. The most naked. The wittiest and the most sarcastic. He dances in circles to the drumbeat alone with his bottle, laughing and laughing. Untouchable.

He stops and points his bottle at the moon and screams, “I am the most devious nonobjective, coolest plural subjective son of a bitch this side of the wind!” And they all laugh. Some spit booze in the air. He has won the contest of words and beauty and debauchery.

I wish to turn away. I wish to close my eyes. I don’t want to see anymore.

But the Moon, she cannot turn her gaze away.

The sun sees your body, but the moon sees your soul.

*This story was inspired from a quote from Charles Olson. It was an exercise in creating a world around another’s words.

Love elephant and want to go steady?

Sign up for our (curated) daily and weekly newsletters!

Editor: Jenna Penielle Lyons

Photo: technodean2000 via Flickr