Triin Paja

Luna Moth


I carry your words as river-water in clay bowls. you do not drink.
you touch my letter as if it were a perfumed neck

while the lovers continue to disintegrate
                                          like the moon at dawn—

when you called me a silver box, you meant lover, the moon, the moon

these words in which I cannot even        touch your ghost.

do you know
what silence does to a body? it grows into
a Luna moth that has no mouth      and lives for a single week—

~

there is your silhouette on a train to Saint Petersburg.
                the windows to you are what windows are to birds.

how you see the sky the way a beached whale
                                          sees the ocean: a fata morgana.

to arrive anywhere is to forget. I stand by the mint-green sea waiting,
a connoisseur of want. the sky wet with stars.

if we wait long enough, everything will become letters or stars.



Backward   |   Issue Five   |   Forward