Walking Moon Magnets

In those days, he and I were walking moon magnets.

Bare feet in tune with the Earth beneath us. The uneven grass blades like knowing smiles of the guardian angels watching over us from above. Nature is uneven. And lopsided. Everything that’s real is.

What is a walking moon magnet? They’d ask me. You’d ask me.

And to that I’d say, You should have been there.

You should have been there, in Ocean Isle, North Carolina, where my whole world was splayed out over a whopping 6.89 acres. The land that two families co-habited and faced the calm waters of the barrier island. Where the wind blew in the patches of tall grass like the orange-haired old lady played the organ at church: slowly and predictably. In those days, we unknowingly lived and played by the moon’s phases. Even the water on a barrier island experiences tides.

I learned about the lunar cycle from my mother, a college anthropology professor, former New Orleans street tarot card reader, and a free spirit. Her body was her a traveling art gallery, and her life experiences were like stream-of-consciousness poems. She wore bracelets she collected from all phases of life and set crystals out in the sun to “charge” each day.

One day, on the night of my thirteenth birthday, when my most memorable gift was bright red blood in my underwear, she sat me down on her window seat.

“Happy birthday, January,” she told me, with tears welling in her eyes. “It’s a very special one because it has lined up with the full moon, and you have started your cycle, too. Your cycle has lined up with the lunar one. You have to take a moon bath tonight.”

“A moon bath?” I questioned awkwardly. I tried not to laugh at how ridiculous it sounded.

“It’s a full moon, and we live right by the water. The gravitational pull of the moon influences the tides,” she responded. “We humans are mostly made of water. It pulls on us too.”

And to her emotion, I couldn’t respond with anything other than, “Don’t worry, mom. I wouldn’t miss it.”

That night was the night I met Million Connerly, the only child of the quiet family who lived on the other half of our land. He was beautiful and already about 6 inches taller than me.

“Sorry, I know I’m trespassing. Sorry. I like to come out here when there’s a full moon,” he apologized, startled at my presence. He was standing on the part of the land that belonged to my family, having crawled through the barbed wire fence.

Suddenly, I was frozen in place, my brain processing power halted by how gorgeous he was. I didn’t say anything back.

“It’s my bad,” he said eventually, stepping back through the barbed wire and wincing as he was poked right above his brow. “You won’t see me here again.”

But I always saw Million there. Million, whose ash-blonde hair covered his eyebrows. Million, who was a soft spot to land and a favorite paragraph in a childhood book. Million, who I came close to kissing about 50 different times my junior year of high school and finally did in October of senior year. Whose body seemed to be pulled closer and closer to mine as my cells aged on. Who I loved more than anything and anyone I have ever loved before and will ever love again. In those days, he and I were walking moon magnets.

When I met you, we were both in our late 20s and all dried up, watching strangers come in and out of one another’s house with lips sealed tightly. Sweeping up glass from broken bonds and pulling sweaty bodies off of our skin like sale stickers. Living in New York City like it wasn’t a total cliche.

“Moon’s crazy tonight,” you said one November, breaking the seal.

We were standing in the apartment lobby near the old, creaking elevators. The moonlight was spilling through the narrow windows like a newly released secret.

“The moon is crazy,” I repeated dully.

And it was. And it moved me, pulling my feet along the streets of Greenwich Village like an MRI magnet luring in a pacemaker-wearing bystander. You reluctantly trailed behind, but the magnetic force seemed to bypass you.

We sat across from each other at a diner, spilling our hearts out as the lukewarm coffee was refilled and plates of pancakes, shredded-cheese nachos, and cheesecake were shifted around on the checkered table. Asking those questions that turn on the open sign for a butterfly theme park in the pit of the stomach. What’s your favorite song? Why? When did you lose your virginity? What was your childhood like? Have you ever been in love?

With most everyone, those questions can only be asked once and trigger that spark. That feeling of newness, springtime, and adrenaline. Because soon it fades to beige. You and I faded to beige, but you were the one who was comfortable and predictable. I, on the other hand, remained mercurial like the wind.

“January’s mood is basically reliant on the weather. Heat waves, yes, but cold spells especially. That and rainy seasons,” you’d tell your friends when they came across me on a particularly rough day. “Don’t tell her I said that.”

But I heard you, time and time again. And it’s true that my moods were mercurial, but I had a hunch that it was the tides of the moon that pulled me, not the change in temperature or rainfall.

“January is having a rough night,” you’d tell your family on the phone. “She can’t make it to dinner.”

“We were planning on coming tonight, but January isn’t feeling well again,” you’d tell our friends, trailing off as you stepped outside. I knew better than to listen at the door for something I didn’t want to hear.

But we had good nights too, me and you, and many of them at that. Like running through Chinatown with a steaming bag of takeout to catch the Long Island Rail back to your dad’s house. He’d deal us cards while we sat on his basement barstools and tell us about his winnings from Poker Night at the American Legion.

“Ay, Kevin, when are you two getting married?” He’d pry, pushing a beer toward you. “Time to tie the knot, son.”

We’d fight that night, and I’d end up sitting outside and staring up at the sky, feeling that tug on my very spirit. A tug with a destination that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

But, still, our good nights were like motion pictures I still watch in my head. Sitting on my fire escape at our place in Greenwich like they do in all of those 90s movies, looking out over our mediocre view of the city and trying not to kiss. Because if we did, we would surely lose our balance and fall to our doom.

Those times were good. But you didn’t know about him - Million, that is - until you finally took the two-layover flight and 1 hour drive to Ocean Isle, where he and I grew up. We boarded that plane together 2 years after we found out I was pregnant and I gave birth to our daughter, Luna. By 6pm, we were back in my childhood home, sitting on my mother’s couch for the first time as a family of three. A moment that should have been irreplaceable.

But that night, on my 33rd birthday, I saw bright red blood in my underwear in the light of the full moon that spilled into the bathroom. I cried to my mother, who held me all night when she should have been holding her granddaughter instead.

I cried because it had been 20 years since that day I met Million and 10 years since the night he died driving home from the airport. They found a lunar meteorite in your car in the passenger’s seat, all wrapped up in a bow. You were bringing that back to me.

“You will see him again someday, January,” my mom finally said softly. “And when you do, you can choose him all over again.”

I stopped my sobbing for a second and looked up in surprise.

“You can, and you will. He is up there sitting on the moon with a fishing pole, ready to pull you when it is time. I have always known this to be the case. But your little moon needs you on Earth now.”

And maybe it’s correct to wonder why I’m thinking of my childhood love when you are sitting on the front porch of my parents’ house, rocking our baby to sleep. But it is because Million and I were walking moon magnets, tied to each other by electric charges.

The truth that I was trying to cover up for so long is that Million never left me when he left this Earth. And just as my mother said, the truth is that one day I will return to him, drifting away from you, in the afterlife where Million lives on.

There are hundreds of people we could fall in love with. As humans, it’s far too easy. Adorably and wonderfully flawed, we are all art pieces that so many others would put in their gallery.

In stories and photos, everything lives on. Stories are oral traditions that twist and turn and bend shape when the audience needs it. But photos are tattoos; there is no hiding the sparkle in the eye of the girl whose magnet is still charged to the moon.

I am haunted by him every step of the way. He is the moon now, and he pulls me toward him a little bit more each day. Perhaps the day that the pull gets harder and I get weaker will be the day I realize my Earthly existence is coming to a close. Finally, my body will give in to the magnetic pull, bathing in the light of a million stars as I walk back to him.