As I opened my hands, Marcia pealed the moon from a page of the sky and placed it between my palm and the curves of my fingers. With the purple napkin on the desk next to me, I dried my palm of the water drops that fell from the eyes of the moon, so that Marcia would not see what she had done. I saw how the wingless birds in the sky ripped through the clouds’ misty eyes to feast on the small pieces of bread that Marcia had picked from the table top to throw at them.

I could closely hear the sound of the sky being torn up, as if someone in a rage was ripping the large evening newspaper. The migrating birds were trying to hold onto flight, with webbed feet, and there was nothing anyone could do. After a half broken yawn, Marcia, who was sitting on Gustav’s beak, got up only to open her arms and caress my bird’s soft feathers.

The sky’s newspaper had no fresh news, except the recurrent news of murders, tortures and rapes. I wanted to put the half-read newspaper away; or, to be honest, I desired to shred it to pieces! Politeness prevented me from doing so that early in the morning. When Marcia looked into the ocean of my eyes, she was fully aware of what she had to do next. With her long nail, she scarred the evening newspaper from one corner to the other, pushing the passing birds towards the centre of the paper through printed words. This relieved me from the anxiety of the sky’s newspaper being pierced. The wingless birds passed effortlessly, drawing my attention to the end of a lifetimes amour between the moon and the sky, between the falling of the moon into a black hole on the right corner of the paper.

Hadi Khojinian