Member-only story
I Thought I Saw the Moon at Noon
Poetry
They say there’s no beginning anew without an ending —
but “they” say a lot of things of varying importance, don’t they?
I thought I knew better (as we tend to do) because grief
had become like an old friend at this point in my life.
“Oh, hello, there you are” — the words slipped into my head
as I contemplated the revelation that I was alone in mid-life,
caught between the existential and the reverential,
a would-be crisis building as I wondered how and why
I was letting myself rot away at the age of prime success.
But you, and each moment I thought of you, were the key
to my unraveling or my uprising (it was too hard to tell).
I remembered the closed casket, the mourners, the brief words
as people tried to tell me it was devastating but I would move on.
Instead of screaming into the faces of these people who meant well,
I closed my lips into a tight smile and tried to nod away the pain.
*
I looked to the skies for comfort, for an answer beyond the stars,
