Isaac Radner
The Man Who Ate the Moon
I walked alone in the woods on an early autumn night. The leaves on the trees were only just beginning to turn, and they rustled like dried paper in the cold-bitten breeze. I had no need for torch nor lantern, for the moon was full and I could easily see my path.
I had walked the very same path many times before, often under the light of the moon, but never was it brighter than that evening. I looked up, wondering what was different. It seemed to me that if I climbed one of the nearby trees, I could reach up and touch the moon, hanging in the sky just above the treetops. Had it always sat so low in the sky, so perfectly round and heavy?
Then, as I stood gazing up at the heavens, I was privy to the most amazing sight. The moon fell out of the sky, sinking slowly toward the ground below like a rock dropped into water. As it fell, it diminished in size until it was small enough to pass undisturbed through the branches above. By the time the moon reached me, it was the size of a large marble—small enough to settle gently into my outstretched palm.
The moon’s surface was cool to the touch and stippled like an egg. Though the sky above had grown dark, the forest around me was illuminated by the steady silver glow that emanated from the orb in my hand. I had never seen anything so exquisite, so perfect. Holding it gingerly between my finger and thumb, I brought it up to my eye. I was shocked to find that, upon closer inspection, the moon’s surface was covered in thousands of tiny faces.
Many of the visages were those of women and men, young and old. Others were those of creatures and beasts I did not recognize, some of whom I was certain did not belong to any living thing upon this earth. Each face was as different and unique as any one might see on the street, with expressions just as variable. Some frowned solemnly, some seemed to be laughing, some looked like they were caught in the middle of speaking, others had features contorted with agony. At first, I thought them statues carved into the grey rock, but as I turned the orb gently in my hand their eyes seemed to track my movements. Unsettled, I drew back, the moon once again at arms-length. The faces dissolved into the crags and craters familiar to those who have contemplated the moon in the night sky.
I noticed, then, that my hand was covered in a fine white dust left behind where the moon had rolled across the surface of my palm. I wet my finger with my tongue, and by lightly touching it on my palm, I was able to pick up some of the dust on my fingertip. I held my finger up to my eye, and I saw that the dust was not merely white, but contained a faint iridescence, a subtle prismatic gleam. There was also a fragrance, floral and sweet like honeysuckle.
Without thought, as if by instinct, I raised my finger to my mouth and gently set it on the tip of my tongue. Immediately, my mouth was filled with the most remarkable flavor – light and sweet, bright and nutty with a pleasant coolness. There was something else, too, more a sensation than a flavor, a sudden expanding of the space within my mouth so that it felt as vast as the night sky above. Then, it was gone as quickly as it began, the moon-dust dissolved and swallowed.
I stood silently. The forest was still and familiar, yet the world around me suddenly felt claustrophobic and thin. I had, for the briefest of moments, held the entirety of the cosmos within my mouth, and I could not shake the feeling. It was, I imagined, what it felt like to be God, who held all of existence within his being. I was overcome by conflicting fears—that I would never forget the feeling and my world would forever be a smaller place, or that my recollection of that night would fade into oblivion, and I would never again experience that moment of bliss, not even in memory. The latter fear won out and, in a frenzy, I ran my tongue across my hand, lapping up what dust remained. Again, flavorful rapture of cosmic proportions was followed by its quick and tragic absence.
I had assumed the moon’s strange visitation would be only temporary, that it would soon rise gently back up above the trees and return to its customary place among the stars. Such an experience, even momentary, should have been enough to fill a soul for the rest of its life, and had I not tasted the moon, my appetite for wonder and beauty would surely have been sated by the mere sight of it descending through the trees. But I had felt, for the briefest of moments, a universe blossom inside of me, and simply gazing upon the rock in my hand, however marvelous, could not match the sensation.
So, as I looked down at the moon where it lay, I was not thinking of releasing it into the starry sky. I thought of eating the thing—of placing it in my mouth and carefully, delicately, reverently taking a bite. And this is what I did. Once the thought occurred to me, it pushed away all else and became the only conceivable action.
I placed the moon gently on my tongue and rolled it around my mouth. Its surface was powdery and sweet like a pastry, and, when I slowly brought my jaw down around it, it resisted only momentarily before yielding to my bite, revealing a delightfully toothsome interior whose notes of citrus perfectly complemented the bright and nutty exterior. Those flavors were secondary to what I felt. Upon the first bite, my whole interior seemed to heave and shift, expanding to make room for the moon, the planets, and the stars.
As I walked home under the dark sky, I waited for the feeling to diminish and disappear. Instead, I felt the edges of the universe inside me continue to expand, and I knew that, like our own cosmos, this process of expansion had no end. I would continue to sense it the next day when I awoke and during the coming weeks, months, and years when the disappearance of the moon from the sky worked unknowable havoc upon our world—as the tides disappeared, as animals who had hunted by the moon’s light starved while their prey thrived, and as the seasons of the earth shortened, then elongated, then disappeared completely and the world slipped slowly into an age of bitter cold.
There were many who thought that the moon had abandoned us as retribution for our sins, judging us unworthy of its silver light. Or perhaps, others said, the moon had always been an illusion, and we were only now waking up to the cold, dark, and lonely reality of our universe. I knew that the moon had not disappeared, for I could feel it within me. And I was certain that if I could once more hold it up to my eye and look closely, I would see a new face added to the multitude covering its surface.
Perhaps my face would be frozen in the moment of surprised delight when I tasted the moon for the first time, or maybe my eyes would be closed as I savored my first bite. Whatever my expression, there I’d be, memorialized alongside those the moon had traveled into and through, leaving universes in its wake, voyaging ever deeper into the heart of being.
Isaac Radner is a writer based in Denver, CO with a BA in Political Science from Colorado College and an MA in Social Science from the University of Chicago. Looking for ways to continue engaging with the ideas and concepts that he had been drawn to in school, he fell in love with writing creative fiction.
Does It Have Pockets is proud to be home to Isaac’s first publication.
