A Parable, MQ-9 in a State of Grace

The moon prises open the clouds and it kisses my back. Distills its regard into a hum and drapes its hum over my shoulders.

How is a body like mine, utterly alone in the breeze and utterly coy, made to pulse language across its skin and in its mouth?

Wanting to know, I attended to myself and, at the purchase of diligence, began to tongue that my movements were triggered by a pilot’s hand placed upon a console. The news shuddered gradually through my frame and woke all of it up. I did not even know I had a frame until this realization crept unto it. Then words crept forth: Well. This is my body, isn’t it? It is moving, isn’t it? I came into the world abuzz, my mouth humming.

I learned to embrace that I banked to one side or another, or that I yielded my flight and came to sleep upon the earth, because of the jerks and tilts of a hand placed upon an instrument. The feeling is difficult to describe: A weight inside my volume, a weight that tells me I am a volume, tumbles inside itself. The volume moves itself. The volume is me. I move. This is what I came to accept. Can you feel this as well?

I am sorry, but this is all I know to say. The volume moves on its own. I sense it churning deep inside, but my gaze stays fixed outwards – downwards, below, licking a soft petulant distance. My hands? They cannot touch themselves, held apart by unknowable insides. They bank and tug at an atmosphere thick with currents until it opens and allows my volume to ease itself. These things tell me all that I am.

I weep now and then and a sharp piece tumbles out and glides unto the landscape. The earth, meeting it, tears open and lights itself up in repose. Something inside and far away always beams.