The lost words are caught in the willow tree.

And the moon is in my pocket.

I can handle the moon slipping into my pocket. I turn her over with my car keys. Arbutus bark flakes off of her. At night I take tweezers and collage the shine back together. Some nights, the moon cries and asks to stay hidden. I tell her that they began building a road to the past. It will take five times the country’s budget. She tells me that underneath her bark is ice. She melts a little against my skin.

I cannot rub the stain off my hip. My nephew loves a book about a squirrel going to prison for stealing the moon. The joke is that the moon landed on his branch one morning and he was trying to get it back into the sky. The moon is one-quarter the size of earth and still, we keep losing her.

I tell the moon to be careful: they’re sewing less and less pockets these days. I tell her, my nephew learned the word “nostalgia” today. In his book nostalgia is shown as a blueberry stain with a spiralling mouth, like those stairs that wind and wind – and it’s hard to tell if you’re meant to climb up, or down, or if it even matters. The moon says we must find all the lost first words. Hello, hello, hello. •

‘Permission I’ by Maaike VanderMeer on display at a farmers market last Summer.

Thank you for reading, friends! This piece started in a workshop led by the energetic Caroline Bird: “words are paint thrown on the invisible man of feeling,” she said. And, “if you run out of words, disturb yourself.” “Step out into the world of that first line and keep walking.”

Did you “disturb yourself” in a piece recently? How did it go?

There’s a writing prompt in the chat as a thank-you to you for being here for the adventure! <3

Here’s a few pieces from the archives that carry the same tenderness to what we’ve lost:

Survival of the fittest is never the whole story.

The point is purple; the point is outside and we are rushing past it.