When the Moon Forgot to Shine

The house was silent when I woke up. Not the comfortable kind of silence—the kind you’d expect when the world is asleep and dreaming—but a hollow one. The kind that echoes in your bones and makes the air feel heavier than it should.

It was exactly 2:13 a.m. The red digits on the alarm clock glowed like embers. I hadn’t meant to fall asleep at all. I had been sitting by the window, waiting for the moon to appear, but it never came. The sky was ink-black and empty.

I thought about that night a lot—the night the moon forgot to shine.

Maybe it was silly, attaching meaning to the absence of a celestial body. But that night marked something in me. A shift. A surrender.

Two weeks earlier, I had stood in the exact same spot, arms crossed against the chill of a December evening. My sister, Layla, sat beside me, sipping cocoa and humming a melody from our childhood.

“Do you think people who are hurting always know they’re hurting?” she asked suddenly, her voice barely louder than the wind.

I looked at her, startled. Her eyes didn’t leave the sky.

“I think some people carry their pain so well, they forget it’s even there,” I replied.

Layla didn’t answer right away. She nodded, ever so slightly, and leaned her head on my shoulder.

“I used to be happy, you know,” she whispered.

“I know,” I whispered back. But I didn’t know. Not really.

The morning after the moonless night, I found the letter. It wasn’t addressed. Just folded neatly, like it had waited its whole life to be read.

If you’re reading this, I’m sorry. I never wanted you to find it this way.

I don’t know when it happened—this quiet unraveling. It wasn’t sudden. It was slow. Like dusk bleeding into night, so gently you don’t even realize you’ve lost the sun.

Please know that I tried. I tried to hold on to the light. But I grew tired. So very tired.

Don’t blame yourself.

And please don’t hate me for this.

I just didn’t want to be the storm in your sunshine anymore.

The letter ended without a name. But I didn’t need one.

I found Layla two hours later in the old greenhouse behind our family home, curled up between forgotten pots and cracked glass. She was breathing. Barely.

They told me she was lucky. That most people don’t get found in time. I wanted to scream at them—lucky? Lucky would have been if she hadn’t written the letter at all.

Recovery is a strange thing. It’s not linear. It’s messy and stubborn and full of days that feel like you’ve made no progress at all. Layla spent three months in inpatient care. I visited every weekend. We didn’t talk much at first. Just sat together. Sometimes cried.

One evening, I brought her a tiny notebook.

“What’s this?” she asked, flipping it open.

“Start again,” I said. “With words. Just for you.”

She looked at me like I had handed her a lifeline. Maybe I had.

It’s been two years now. Layla is different. Softer, maybe. Still healing. But alive.

Last month, she self-published a poetry collection titled When the Moon Forgot to Shine. I cried when I saw the dedication:

For my sister, who stayed up with me through the longest night.

She says writing saved her. I think loving did too.

Sometimes, I still stare out the window at night. And sometimes, the moon still hides.

But I don’t fear the darkness anymore.

Because I know: even on the nights the moon forgets to shine, the morning always remembers to rise.