Ten Moons & Other Poems

Sabrina Rose Nelson

Ten Moons 

I was born during a dark moon, which means the moon was right behind the sun, which,

according to the old copy of Moon Signs I found at a used bookstore in London, means that I

may often feel as though I’m being led by something much larger than myself and must take care

not to fall into fanaticism. 

When I was five and the moon was shining full I earned the nickname Sabrina the Brave

by running away from my nana and leaping off a small cliff into the Pacific Ocean. 

My nana was born when the moon was a waxing crescent, which is why she had a certain air of

life, green freshness and vitality, like an earthy spring garden. 

She died when I was six and the moon was dark. 

Since then I have been homesick everywhere I have lived. 

According to myth, when the Incan moon goddess Mama Quilla cried, her tears fell to earth as

droplets of precious silver. 

That always makes me think of the last time I saw her, when she mouthed “I love you” to me

with tears falling down her face as I put on my coat and walked out of the hospital into a cold

November night. 

I’ve moved so many times that home has become the faded polaroids of her I keep tucked into

my journal and the impression of a striped orange green comforter steeped in windowpane

moonlight. 

In the past year and a half I have spanned 10 countries and 12 time zones, and exactly three

things have stayed the same: the moon’s cycles, the smell of the ocean, and the long list of things

I will never be able to tell her. 

I miss you, as in it’s a new moon, as in the moon is hidden behind the sun, as in where are you?

why did you leave so soon?, as in can you hear me when I whisper to you through the silver

night air?, as in today I got home from work and started sobbing on the hardwood, eyes dripping

a river to float me home.

Wet Soil 

Pond muck and blood rot 

at the bottom of it: pain and love 

and chaos and creation and disorder

and underneath it all, more love. 

This soil is tenacious and pungent 

home to wild parsnips and orphaned ducklings

covered in wet, sea grass, dewy earth,

rich silica worms, furled lotus. 

Wet soil buried deep, blackberry brambles,

fertile mother–shard and sliver I dig for bones.

Blood dripping, skin starved, alone,

I lay out to bake in the fevered heat. 

My body bare earth and scorched dirt. Dew

arriving to revivify, my grandmother’s tears

a sweet cooling resurrection. 

In this soil I was planted, and here 

in this soil I am made new.

Ananke 

Damp summer night air fans in 

through the window and my 

peppermint tea has gone cold. 

In this place I am free but wanting,

suspended in the moonlit pocket 

between everything that was and 

everything else. 

I close my eyes and raspberries 

ripe and hot scatter the ground 

like triumphant confetti. I am five years

old and spread out on the mossy grass:

shaded in the watchful cool of 

our backyard aspen, my handmade tulle

skirt wrapping me up in a lilac tinted

pool of my grandmother’s love. 

A place only feels like home once

I’m done living there. 

Right now the familiar musk of this moldy

basement makes me dizzy. Last summer

I spent an entire day searching the

shoreline for crab shells long outgrown.

I lined them up one by one on the porch

and soaked in the comfort of old homes

safely abandoned. 

It is too cold here, and too dark. The bleak

grey skies are not cozy yet, my chest hurts,

and I do not know if what I want lies beyond

me or further back. 

A place only feels like home once

I’m long gone.