the art of pretending

i wanted the moon once. i wanted to press it into my pocket, patting its depths and smiling when the sun went down. i wanted to keep it there, like spare change that you couldn’t give to a beggar because your mother always said that they would just buy cigarettes and they don’t need it. (so you dropped it on accident when she wasn’t looking.)

i just only wanted it to rest in my tiny pocket forever and sigh when the sun was spreading its rays across my body and i wanted it to breathe within me. but now i want it to swallow me, i want to disappear inside of its craters and i want to feel perfect and lost and now i don’t want it to live

if i’m not inside of its light.

(my hope is trapped within sun rays and it is bleeding in and out of the light, always falling out of reach now because i am distracted by something and i can lie to myself and say i do not need the sun because i don’t need its warmth, now. but i do, i do.)