Your Happy Unhinging

Abstract

Your Happy Unhinging Licia Morelli (bio) Today is the full Thunder Moon, the lunar eclipse, the twenty-sixthday of summer. Today’s full moon will haunt you through your window while youdream of nakedness and shame. It’s the illuminator to your woes sothat you might release them like the boyfriend you had at twenty-one. Today is the day to make a statement. One that reveals & upsets thepowers that be. Depending on who you are, the powers that be mightinclude yourself. Today’s moon is the reaper of rewards when you own both Broadwayand Park Place. It’s the smile that goes alongside your internal delightsas you pass go and collect $200. At this thunder and release you’ll begin to understand the boundariesyou hold and held, past and present. To learn when you began to sayno to those who didn’t respect you, who didn’t hold your feelings inthe jar you offered, couldn’t hold your feelings in the coke bottle youshared, shouldn’t have held your feelings in the locker combinationyou offered. With every no you, like fingertips releasing a pinch of salt, let go ofthe cracks, the glitches in your heart, the disbelief that who you areis enough. You begin to reclaim the energy you left on the side of theroad, at midnight twenty-six summers ago. This moon is the hall pass you asked for to escape your seventh-grademath class to look in on the art class you were not permitted to take.This moon is a beautiful nuisance. A flat tire at sunset across from thepond where you spent your days. [End Page 107] Let this moon turn your lights on as you come home after a longevening swim. Let it be the cairn when you’re lost in the woods. Thismoon will show you who you are becoming. It will show you how toshed the layers of lies you told yourself all these years, the lies of youare not worthy, you cannot do it, you are not loved. Do not believe the lies as the skin falls from your shoulder blades backto the dirt, the grass, the meadow full of poppies. Drink in this Thunder Moon, this cosmic milkshake, and allow itssweetness to last. [End Page 108] Licia Morelli Licia Morelli is the best-selling author of The Lemonade Hurricane: A Story of Mindfulness and Meditation and Darn Tough: A Story of Grit and Grace (forthcoming from Tilbury House Publishers). She is the recipient of the 2015 Maine Literary Award and Gelette Burgess Honor, and has been featured in The Boston Globe, Publisher’s Weekly, The Rumpus, elephant journal and more. Licia is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. liciamorelli@gmail.com. Copyright © 2020 Johns Hopkins University Press