Sanna Wani | Moon gods are not born | Glass: A Journal of Poetry

March 2019

Sanna Wani

Moon gods are not born

I want to stand still by the lake. I want to watch the tide eat the sand. To bleed the night into the water. I have white hair that touches my shoulders. I have left my shoulders somewhere behind me. Somewhere behind me is years ago when lifting was new and dawns needed greeting. I no longer believe in greeting. I want to beg the sun to never come home. I beg the sun, do not come home. I beg the sun. I beg the sun. I have not gone home since the bleeding began. I watch the water turn black because I never change. I watch my father come see me by the shore and I do not move. I listen to him as he tells me that he does not believe in lakes. I do not believe in lakes, he says, but he does not say lake because he does not speak with his tongue. He says ( s a m u d r a ), a word that uses his mouth to open something bigger. An ocean or maybe just something roiling, something big and swaying underneath us. I continue to hide that I, skin of his skin and blood of his blood — I am the one who never wants the sun to come home. I never want the sun to come home. I just wait for the lake to be eaten by the sand and I bleed more strange things into the water.

I wrote this poem in an urge to just stand by the lake: to abandon all my responsibilities and go stand by the lake until my legs gave out. I'd also been reading the myth of Savitri for class and Savitri is a character from the Mahabharata (also named after/embodying/blessed by a Vedic goddess of the same name, daughter of the solar deity of twilight, Savitr) who takes a sacred fast from any kind of rest to pray for her dying husband. So she spends four days standing, without sitting, laying down or sleeping. I began to imagine, in between my urge and the myth, a being who maybe lives in this energy. A being who is the corporeal form of that urge to just stand by a lake. The rest of it poured out pretty smoothly after that, the mythos of this unmoving moon god. And before you ask about the moon part, well, ask yourself: have you ever met a poet who could talk about a lake without remembering the moon?

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