Moonshot #1

I have hatched a plot whereby we can at last get our slip­pery, sweaty hands on our prey. I know you don’t believe it’s pos­sible, but it is. It truly is. It has to be, because these sun­lit, cloud-dashed days of ifs and buts are grow­ing tired of our pro­cras­tin­a­tion. A dull fever is set­ting in, and my fore­head is creas­ing and cav­ing in under such remorse­less heavy weather.

We can hunt down the trophy, imprison it and make it ours. That eth­er­eal globe has taunted us for far too long, mak­ing us loathe yet love it in equal meas­ure each time it breaks through the black­ness. Always the most unfor­giv­ing of search­lights. This is the moment, then, to make it answer to our every desire, our every ridicu­lous and imprac­tical whim. When it is ours, it will glim­mer when we ask. When it is ours, it will illu­min­ate the creases in the bed­clothes for twenty-five hours on end, if that is what we wish. Dawn will only come when we issue our demands.

We have doc­u­mented our mis­sion down to the last dot­ted i and crossed t. We are bur­ied under the scratched-out signs and crumpled papers. Every foot­note cor­res­ponds with for­mu­laic cer­tainty to every super­scrip­ted digit. We have worked tire­lessly after dark, after dark and after dark some more, until dawn inev­it­ably bled itself slowly over the hori­zon — by which point we had, of course, entirely missed our target’s slow noc­turnal wander across the heav­ens. No mat­ter. Not this night, nor ever again. The end is in sight. Our glor­i­ous vic­tory is almost within our grasp, just up there bey­ond the trees. Close enough to touch, if only we can learn to stretch and push our pathetic bod­ies to their limit.

We have the plans, we have the dia­grams, we have the angles math­em­at­ic­ally charted down to the last degree. The only task remain­ing on our check­list is to lure the sil­ver mirrored moon — that bloated, pen­du­lous prize — into our nets, to tempt it with caresses and then clutch it to our hearts. Soon, our fin­ger­prints will mould new craters from the com­pacted dust. Soon, our eyes will stare on its shad­ows like silent stars.

“Catch me, oh catch me, oh catch me if you can.”