Chapter 18 Moon Song
Moon Song
Up at the bulb I hear a strange noise. Squinting at the rotating light, I realize it’s not any of it’s gears. I put my ear to the floor. No, it’s separate from the hum of the generator. I look around for the source but can’t find any.
It’s the middle of the night, and I go down the stairs to grab another blanket to wrap myself in and see if I can locate whatever is making the subtle susurration that moves through the lighthouse.
The windows softly shake, vibrating along a low hum.
I check the single electrical socket in my room, its murmur almost an industrial buzz.
Pressing my hand to the glass, I can feel as the hum oscillates under the pads of my fingers.
Lir is humming a small tune to Little Bird. Not much more than a simple melody, but it reverberates in a strange way within his throat—like the two distinct parts of him are harmonizing.
I don’t know what specific part of him is the catalyst for healing her.
It must be everything that falls from his mouth.
Including every word, every sound and every musical note that carries across the wind because I can feel the respite from their tones moving around within in my own body.
I flex my hand, remembering his presence and the feeling the shape of his lips moving over the contours of my palm.
Singing with the wind, his song and the breeze are in perfect harmony as it curls across the rocks lulling me to sleep while standing up in my dreamy haze.
I can’t help wishing in some part of my heart that he’s singing for me, a sweet lullaby I can nestle my head into.
But, I look out my window through the gauzy curtains illuminated by the cloud smudged moon to see him looking out towards the sea and it breaks my heart a little to realize that this hymn is a homesick cry.
That I can’t keep my pet goldfish forever—but he’s not just my fish, nor my puppy or baby bird.
Nor any other silly sort of companion that I have belittled my feelings down to, that I’ve dismissed Lir to being. He is, in fact—a man.
The light outside looks like pointed nocturnal fingers stretching out over all the misshapen rocks, as if the moon would pick them up and repossess them both this instant.
How could I—after everything I’ve screamed into the abyss about the seagulls, how could I blame her for returning Little Bird to the heavens?
How would I plead my case against her to not take Lir from me and put him back in the sea where he belongs?
When I was married before, I was indeed smitten.
But also, that was just something you did.
The next step in a firmly laid out plan for my life.
Yet, I still spent so many nights pleading with any God or Goddesses to let Eli come home when he disappeared at sea, but then again—maybe, I hadn’t prayed hard enough.
After all, I knew a dark open secret laid deep in my heart.
I knew he had other lovers on other ports, but I had chosen to ignore it all.
Instead, to just remember those quiet happy moments beneath our blankets.
But now, it all comes rushing back to me with this melancholy song, with the riptide current Lir is etching into my soul.
The memories flood back of the broken plates in the kitchen, the lipstick sealed note in Eli’s pocket, and the money missing from his paycheck.
I can’t choose to not fall in love with Lir because I am over romanticizing the past—and it’s more true than those idyllic memories ever could be, that I am currently falling in love with Lir.
In that moment he turns to look up at me, clutching Little Bird against his shoulder.
I didn’t know if he could see me from there to my high up window, but as he hums lowly I feel as though he can see me through glass, brick, cement and X-ray through my skin.
I tighten my robe, not for modesty, but for fear he is seeing deep into the broken parts of my heart.
How he looks out at the sea, that longing, I recognize it.
It’s how I long desperately for my old self when I look in the mirror.
I spin around, the mirror in my room is only bright white though, filled up with the spotlight from the sky.
My dark silhouette hazy in its form. A new outline could be carved out from this moonlight, redrawn in my own design—or his.
I don’t have to be Andrea ‘the coward’, ‘the widow’, or even the ‘lonesome lighthouse keeper’.
In this song, I can feel myself being rebuilt and I hope whatever magic that lies between these sound waves, that Little Bird is feeling it ten-fold.
Between his voice, the waves, the wind, the whirring, the clicking and the static of the radio—I am carried far away riding on music paper staff lines, a symphony pulling me down further into Ophelia’s languid float.
I am releasing myself into the arms of insanity, since they seem to hold me more tenderly than any embrace I have ever felt before.
Feeling some hope, my chest is lighter listening to the symphony of my tower and as it vibrates in me, it becomes tangible. It feels real—
And I return back up to the lens.