I Thought I Saw the Moon at Noon

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,

but you were gone and that was my pill to swallow by night or day.

But one day, after a slew of errands and calls to tie up loose ends,

my gaze caught on the blue expanse above me, the pale shadow

of the moon greeting my frayed senses and battered nerves.

It felt like a sign, more than any rainbow or shooting star,

because you had loved to analyze the skies and chase the moon,

whether it was a crescent or a full-bellied globe hanging there.

Then I blinked, and the moon disappeared like a sleight of hand,

and I felt like I lost you all over again, splitting my heart in two.

Call me melodramatic if you will (you might be laughing right now),

but I could imagine hearing you on the wind, clear as day:

"Don't let me drag you down. Try to lift yourself up."

And the tears, they weren't new, but every piece of me

hoped you had found a new home somewhere else,

maybe in that waiting phantom hidden in the sky.

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