The Weight of Moonlight

Elias usually slept like a stone, the kind of deep, dreamless sleep that came from years of hard living, hard work, and not much thought about what might lie beyond the next sunrise. But tonight, sleep was a cruel joke. The bed felt too big, the sheets too cold, and the air, usually thick with the faint scent of old wood and Martha’s lavender sachet, was just… empty. Two years gone, and sometimes it still felt like yesterday, sometimes like a lifetime.

He pushed himself up, the springs groaning in protest, mimicking the ache in his own bones. The house was a tomb. Every creak of the floorboards under his calloused feet was amplified, every rustle of the curtains against the cool night air a whisper of something he couldn't quite grasp. He walked to the back door, the old screen door hanging a little crooked on its hinges, letting it squeak open. Stepped out onto the porch, cold concrete on his bare soles.

The moon hung fat and full, a dinner plate in the ink-black sky, spilling silver over everything. It didn't soften the edges of the world, not really. It just sharpened the shadows, made them longer, stranger, twisting the familiar into something else. His backyard, usually a mess of practical tools and overgrown weeds, looked like a stage, stark and dramatic. That old rusted swing set Martha loved, half-buried in ivy, became a skeletal hand reaching for the stars. The shed, a squat, forgotten hulk by day, became a watchful guardian.

He walked down the three steps, the grass cool and damp between his toes. He didn't know why he was out here. Didn't have a plan. But the house felt too small tonight, too quiet. His hands, gnarled and scarred from a thousand repairs, a thousand moments of holding Martha’s smaller, softer ones, hung heavy at his sides. He shuffled along, past the broken bird bath, past the patch where he'd tried, and failed, to grow tomatoes last summer. His gaze fell on the rose bushes.

Martha's roses. She'd nurtured them like children, coaxing blooms from reluctant canes, snipping away the dead heads with a surgeon's precision. Now, they were a wild, thorny tangle, some branches reaching aggressively, others drooping, tired. A few stubborn blooms, late for the season, glimmered white and ghostly in the moonlight. He reached out, his fingers brushing a thorny stem. A sharp prick. Didn't even flinch.

He moved then, a slow, deliberate shuffle into the dense thicket of green. It wasn't dancing, not in any way anyone would recognize. It was more like an old boxer, shadowboxing with ghosts. Ducking under an errant branch, reaching for a dead bloom, twisting his wrist, a phantom pair of shears in his hand. He grunted, a low, guttural sound, as if pushing against an unseen weight.

He found himself tracing the path she would have taken, moving around the biggest bush, bending low to check for aphids, standing tall to admire a new bud. His body remembered, even if his mind kept trying to forget. The cool air raised goosebumps on his arms, but he barely noticed. His breath plumed white in front of him, little clouds of vapor, like the words he couldn't speak, evaporating into the night.

The shadows of the roses stretched long and thin, like grasping fingers, reaching out, retracting. He felt them around him, a silent company. The shadow of Martha herself, perhaps. Not a specter, but the weight of her absence, a presence heavy enough to make him move, to make him fight this quiet battle under the indifferent gaze of the moon. He worked his way deeper into the overgrown patch, his movements growing steadier, a rhythm starting to form, a slow, mournful waltz with memory and regret. Thorns caught on his pajamas, snagging, tearing a little. He didn't care. The pain was real, at least. Something real.

He stopped, finally, by the oldest bush, the one with the biggest, most fragrant blooms when Martha was here. He knelt, pushing aside a tangle of weeds. His fingers found something hard, cold. A small terracotta bird, chipped and weathered, half-buried in the dirt. Martha's. She'd always placed it here, right at the base. He picked it up, ran his thumb over its smooth, cool surface. The moon caught the chipped wing, making it gleam like a fresh scar. He just knelt there, holding the little bird, the silent yard wrapped around him, the shadows stretching, stretching, until they merged with the coming dawn.