As if the Moon by Katie Olson Afshar

As if the Moon

A man from the other side of the earth
taught me the word for belly button
pupik in his language, with two fingers
pressed on my navel.
Because I loved him
I thought of his father and mother
repeating the syllables when he was a child,
during baths, before bedtime,
and ancestors before them—generations
pointing out the body to their children.
Every word he said was beautiful
and I asked for more words. Pulled my lips
over the dappled vowels.
Cat. Morning. Milk. Moon.
Baby words re-learned
in my bedroom, the kitchen:
Olive oil.
Window.
He saved money by housesitting
so I learned the words of stranger’s lives,
star fish, cohav yahm, in the old woman’s bathroom.
A rabbit he fed while a family was out of town—arnav,
you’re soft like the arnav. I gathered his words in my cheek
when I wasn’t with him, went to barbecues alone,
watched a baby held over a shoulder,
how she cooed in desperation at the moon, as if the moon
were already inside the infant lungs,
or spleen. As if language were a release
of what was already inside a body.
Every time I saw him
he reminded me he’d leave one day
so I asked for more words:
the sky, sha-may-yeem
the water, may-yeem.
He rejected his country
so his freedom encompassed the surface of the Earth.
That’s just one kind of many kinds
of freedom
I told myself.
When he left
took me a long time
to say I don’t like the moon
full, over my head
dictator moon, won’t let me sleep
when I’m alone in the mountains.
But when it’s low and yolky
I’m loose with power,
a she-captain in a season of calm seas.
I love the moon.
I don’t care about the moon.
His name meant island of palms
which was tattooed on his shoulder when he was a boy.
I traced my finger over the blurred lump of land
the palm tree curved to the side in happiness.
Some simple words are tethered here
murmuring in the walls
of the big vessels
routing my blood.

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Katie Olson Afshar is a writer and pediatrician. Her work has appeared in the Sun, Catamaran Literary Reader, RockPaperPoem and Hunger Mountain, among other journals. She lives in the California Bay Area with her husband and daughter.