01-22-2026, 03:13 AM
Shortly after the sun sets, after the stars rise, when the moon graces existence with its glow. We stay awake for now, at least, growing shadows deepen over our private conversations. What conversations would we, the moon and I, have instead? I doubt it would know more about me than you, however I doubt you know me like it does. The moon does not feel, with exception to the sun, untied in its tidal sway much as I hope to be. It watches us with that face I don’t quite see, but that you insist is there, smiling down on us with its knowing glint. Maybe you’re right, I have started to feel watched. Enough about the moon you say. I hadn’t said a word; you must have caught its face in my eyes. I turn my gaze back to you, noticeably you do the same. You always were more drawn to the stars than the moon, the sun most of all. I think now how you might talk to the sun, given the chance, how the moon and I would share the same glance—we knew you too would hit it off. You’d boast of its brilliance and I'd nod along, holding back how I feel it’s too bright. What do we do from here (or something similar, I wasn’t fully paying attention unless you consider my attention to the moon, sun, and stars and how we would all speak) you ask me. I do not know. Yes you do, know I mean, that I meant to say something to answer you. Instead I let my smile fall just as the sun fell below the sea. Seeing that look you know my answer.
The night sky really is a marvel, in its cold but steady embrace. We look up, seeing how small we are and how important that makes us. Every word lasts only the moment it leaves our tongues, lasting a moment longer as it reaches our ears. The sky will not hear its praises but we whisper them nonetheless. Sometimes I worry how much we praise the sky, your voice wasted on that fleeting love. My lips they move for you, not your praise, I can’t get that out. It’s like when you swallow before you chew, that half focused choking feeling decisions made to force it down or spit. I do not spit—you do not see me choke. So I speak to the Milky Way and its spiral branches of empty life, how that scale gives us purpose. You get what I mean, but now what I mean is lost behind praises to the stars. You look down, why do you always do that? I look up waiting for something, anything. Why do you always do that? I hear you, but don’t reply right away. I'm too stuck thinking about how you always seem to look down as you have something important to say. The way you look up like that whenever I ask you something bigger than us, it frustrates me you know. I do know and I'm sorry but how can something be bigger than you or I while we are so small seeing the stars.
You shut the blinds, we can talk now. Finally, I can savor your words as they speak to me, and me alone. The way tar drips, hot, dark, and reflective, is how I catch your voice. My voice cracks as I speak, pitch fills the path I walk, carefully despite the bloated black patches I trip upon. Wavering breath turning tentative touch. How I wish we spoke more of the night. Your hand on my face, smile cutting with vile I didn’t know you possessed. No, that’s not right, I didn’t know you cared to share with me. I considered your eyes instead, they were unsure. I felt watched again, I checked for the moon in the drawn blinds. I found myself uncertain. We stay together scared, for a moment but just a moment, then we’re alone. Forgotten who we were, correct who are we now. We don’t talk for a while, maybe this moment is the loudest, I doubt it but my ears ache despite. A ringing I can’t quite describe, like a sound we just can’t hear, just below my breath. This unfamiliarity is an embrace kinder than the night.
Breathing slows, I inhale realizing it’s not mine. As you forget your words, remembering rest I understand you deeper. I continue our conversation on my own for a spell but I can’t recall where we left off, besides I can’t focus with this ringing. Rung out, mind and body I left you there with the weight of our words. Tension of unwavering burden which I regret to let you bear. Better you than me for now, I’ll help you hold when you wake. Sharp, biting more than the stars promised they would, was the wind on my face. It’s only us now, we, the wind and the moon. I check the door as it shuts, as I turn hand reaching, I find air and sky. Where has the ringing gone, the house rests with you, as I yearn to the sky. I will be as dust is to the earth, as I am to the night. We know we miss those eyes, our reflection between them. I can’t think of that, now I have left behind the heft of uncertainty for the praises of the moon.
I consider, the moon, drawing me further away from the house that is asleep and dreaming. Does it dream as you do? I ask it and it does not consider me, I do not feel watched. This should be a comfort but it is not, I see the sky between the lights that are stars and the dim that is my thoughts, this is not the night that held me as we needed to be held. Suckling on the cosmos, we were as grand as the stones that make up the sand, sand that is pulled back by the tide. Tide that I can't imagine the moon caring for as softly as I would care for the sea. We hold that astonishing ocean of life and fear within us, although I feel mine as part of it is left with you. As the air is pulled through my nose, fog as it seeps from my mouth, like a wisp of a cloud lamenting that it be whole again. No matter how deep my breaths, the sky stays clear, the fog escapes me as I escaped myself in search of the stars. I find the solace I knew well to be stuck with us as I considered the sun and moon and you and I and the stars (which you preferred, or so you would say). Shadows have deepened past the understanding calm of dusk. I am not scared, but I am afraid.
I scream to the stars how much I hate their piety as they like us, worship upwards. I plead to the moon to let me see its face, let me hold it warmly, soft in my palms. I would greet it with a warm smile, rivaling the sun, the one I withhold against that cold light of the earth. I too now move the seas as drops of loathing fall to the soil. Perhaps someday a flower will sprout there, a daisy or similar all important, inconsequential beauty bloomed from my joy. I call even to the sun, red to rival its solar fury. A coward with insurmountable resplendence. I demand that it stand against me, needing to prove myself in its radiance, to stand tall enough to see the stars folly. How different things would be if I was as meaningless as the crushing infinite. How much we could have spoken, if only I were the sun and you the moon. I see its face now…it’s so much kinder than mine.
The night sky really is a marvel, in its cold but steady embrace. We look up, seeing how small we are and how important that makes us. Every word lasts only the moment it leaves our tongues, lasting a moment longer as it reaches our ears. The sky will not hear its praises but we whisper them nonetheless. Sometimes I worry how much we praise the sky, your voice wasted on that fleeting love. My lips they move for you, not your praise, I can’t get that out. It’s like when you swallow before you chew, that half focused choking feeling decisions made to force it down or spit. I do not spit—you do not see me choke. So I speak to the Milky Way and its spiral branches of empty life, how that scale gives us purpose. You get what I mean, but now what I mean is lost behind praises to the stars. You look down, why do you always do that? I look up waiting for something, anything. Why do you always do that? I hear you, but don’t reply right away. I'm too stuck thinking about how you always seem to look down as you have something important to say. The way you look up like that whenever I ask you something bigger than us, it frustrates me you know. I do know and I'm sorry but how can something be bigger than you or I while we are so small seeing the stars.
You shut the blinds, we can talk now. Finally, I can savor your words as they speak to me, and me alone. The way tar drips, hot, dark, and reflective, is how I catch your voice. My voice cracks as I speak, pitch fills the path I walk, carefully despite the bloated black patches I trip upon. Wavering breath turning tentative touch. How I wish we spoke more of the night. Your hand on my face, smile cutting with vile I didn’t know you possessed. No, that’s not right, I didn’t know you cared to share with me. I considered your eyes instead, they were unsure. I felt watched again, I checked for the moon in the drawn blinds. I found myself uncertain. We stay together scared, for a moment but just a moment, then we’re alone. Forgotten who we were, correct who are we now. We don’t talk for a while, maybe this moment is the loudest, I doubt it but my ears ache despite. A ringing I can’t quite describe, like a sound we just can’t hear, just below my breath. This unfamiliarity is an embrace kinder than the night.
Breathing slows, I inhale realizing it’s not mine. As you forget your words, remembering rest I understand you deeper. I continue our conversation on my own for a spell but I can’t recall where we left off, besides I can’t focus with this ringing. Rung out, mind and body I left you there with the weight of our words. Tension of unwavering burden which I regret to let you bear. Better you than me for now, I’ll help you hold when you wake. Sharp, biting more than the stars promised they would, was the wind on my face. It’s only us now, we, the wind and the moon. I check the door as it shuts, as I turn hand reaching, I find air and sky. Where has the ringing gone, the house rests with you, as I yearn to the sky. I will be as dust is to the earth, as I am to the night. We know we miss those eyes, our reflection between them. I can’t think of that, now I have left behind the heft of uncertainty for the praises of the moon.
I consider, the moon, drawing me further away from the house that is asleep and dreaming. Does it dream as you do? I ask it and it does not consider me, I do not feel watched. This should be a comfort but it is not, I see the sky between the lights that are stars and the dim that is my thoughts, this is not the night that held me as we needed to be held. Suckling on the cosmos, we were as grand as the stones that make up the sand, sand that is pulled back by the tide. Tide that I can't imagine the moon caring for as softly as I would care for the sea. We hold that astonishing ocean of life and fear within us, although I feel mine as part of it is left with you. As the air is pulled through my nose, fog as it seeps from my mouth, like a wisp of a cloud lamenting that it be whole again. No matter how deep my breaths, the sky stays clear, the fog escapes me as I escaped myself in search of the stars. I find the solace I knew well to be stuck with us as I considered the sun and moon and you and I and the stars (which you preferred, or so you would say). Shadows have deepened past the understanding calm of dusk. I am not scared, but I am afraid.
I scream to the stars how much I hate their piety as they like us, worship upwards. I plead to the moon to let me see its face, let me hold it warmly, soft in my palms. I would greet it with a warm smile, rivaling the sun, the one I withhold against that cold light of the earth. I too now move the seas as drops of loathing fall to the soil. Perhaps someday a flower will sprout there, a daisy or similar all important, inconsequential beauty bloomed from my joy. I call even to the sun, red to rival its solar fury. A coward with insurmountable resplendence. I demand that it stand against me, needing to prove myself in its radiance, to stand tall enough to see the stars folly. How different things would be if I was as meaningless as the crushing infinite. How much we could have spoken, if only I were the sun and you the moon. I see its face now…it’s so much kinder than mine.