MY MOON FRIEND

Dear patient keeper of sky’s slow breath,

Forgive me for taking so long to tell you this.

You watched me stumble through every season,

all my false dawns, all my half-lit reckonings,

while you hung from above, watching,

the kindest witness to all that refuses to rest.

You, pale archivist of tides and secrets,

how many names have you worn smooth

under the tongues of the centuries?

Selene, Chandra, Tsukuyomi, Máni,

each one is a candle lit in a different language,

each one is a wish cast upward.

And still you glow, unswayed,

a lantern for the sleepless.

Tonight, I write from a window cracked, staring up at you,

your world below is a hush of breath and wire.

Somewhere a train sighs through a sleeping town,

and its smoke becomes your veil.

I could tell you everything I’ve lost,

but you already know because

you saw it drift out of my hands like mist.

Instead, I’ll tell you this,

you make loss seem beautiful.

You lend its ache a shimmer.

I wonder if you ever tire

of being half and whole by turns,

of being worshiped and forgotten in the same night.

Maybe that’s why I trust you,

you understand the quiet labor of returning.

How to wane without vanishing.

How to shine without needing praise.

Do you remember the night I was a child,

and I thought you were following our car home?

I pressed my face to the glass and whispered, stay.

And you stayed. You always stay.

So here is my offering, old friend,

a handful of ink, a breath of wanting,

the tremor of my gratitude.

Keep it among your craters,

where all the forgotten prayers go.

And when the world grows too loud again,

I will look up and find you,

quiet, eternal, listening,

as if you had been waiting

for these words all along.