Abraham Mancino

Day Moonbeams

There’s something in the air that drifts, floats, pops into a semblance of a moonbeam. I wine and dine the thought that it could be a flying moat of dust or a piece of cosmic detritus coalescence. I ponder the thought of trash in a meaningful extraterrestrial form for a moment as I follow the thing to its source. It’s a moonbeam, but in the daytime coming through my window. What if we were all on a floating piece of waste in someone else’s day moonbeam? It makes me feel just as small as that little something moving through the air. I am no more meaningful than that collection of skin cells floating through the air above me. Drifting through the dust moats that have a swirling piercing motion about them. That’s what the day moonbeam reminds me of, a ray of sunshine coming through my window. They slump through the holes in my wall without any regard for my furniture, much like my cat. He looks liquid, the way he moves through the spaces between the dust moats and sunbeams. Like a slug, his eyes seem to leave trailing iridescent worms across the floor. He follows those slipping blundering sunbeams to the head of my bed and stares at me with his eyes like the cold windowpane the sliding beam has stumbled through. Sitting there his purring smells like that moat of dust. Like warm hugs, soft blankets, deep motor roars, and the inescapable way the heat waves off the pavement.