i hold grudges like a crow

i hold grudges like a crow
naturally
and for life.
i might not even fully remember
what someone did to me
but i remember their face,
vaguely

the moon yearns for home, which is why we understand each other

i read once
that there is a theory about the moon and the ocean
(no, not the one you’re thinking of)
i’m talking about the pacific ocean,
and how there is a theory that it was formed
with the moon
because of
the moon.

you see, it is thought that a long time ago,
long before life as we know it,
when the earth was new,
the earth was
struck
by something other than itself.

it was struck so hard, in fact, that it
lost
a chunk
of itself.
this piece, in grief, didn’t go too far;
instead, it formed spherical next to its mother-twin.
this is our moon,
beloved.

everyone talks
of the moon’s yearning for the waters,
its push and pull of the ocean.
this is true too,
but hides a deeper truth -

the moon yearns for the earth;
and the earth yearns for her, too.
this is why the moon’s pull is so insistent,
why she moves the waters and our souls with it.
we are mostly water, after all,
and as the tides are pulled so are we
upwards
outwards
towards.
this is why we look towards the moon and
yearn and
long and
s t r e t c h
throwing up hands and voices and hearts
in the hopes that one day she will join us again
home,
in the arms of the earth and the sea,
as we all long to do.

the good news is she is on an elliptical path
to join us one day,
colliding and remerging with violence
the same way she was carved away
(yay!)
we will be dust when this occurs,
the echos of humanity long forgotten,
just an imprint in the crust and soil like the fossils we covet now.
this is also good news,
as the impact would kill us, too
a messy, vibrant sort of love
the kind of reunion that can only happen
when two parts of a whole
rejoin again

the moon yearns and that is why we understand it.
the sun yearns for nothing,
and if the other celestial bodes yearn it is not with the same
heartbreaking,
soul-tearing,
intimate
ache
that the moon does.
the earth and the moon yearn for each other
the way we do.
for connection, for unity,
for wholeness,
for home.

wil tabron is a poet living in Roanoke, Virginia.