Moonlit Grapple

Arthur couldn't sleep. The house breathed around him, a heavy, silent thing, each creak of the old wood a whisper of all the lives that weren't here anymore. He'd tried the book. He'd tried the news. He'd tried just lying there, eyes wide open in the dark, counting the beats of his own heart, but the numbers kept getting tangled, pulled apart by thoughts that clawed at the edges of his mind. Lily's birthday had been last week. No call. He knew why. Didn't make it any easier to breathe.

He pushed himself up, the cheap sheets cool against his skin. His feet hit the cold floorboards. A sigh escaped him, a quiet, guttural thing. The moon, fat and bruised, hung low in the sky, spilling silver light through the window and across the living room carpet. It called to him, a silent, lonely invitation. He pulled on a t-shirt, old and soft, and a pair of worn-out jeans. No socks. The chill felt right.

The back door groaned open. The night air hit him, damp and smelling of cut grass, something vaguely floral from the neighbor's yard, and the earth itself. He stepped onto the patio, concrete cold under his bare soles. The backyard stretched out, familiar in its contours but transformed by the lunar glow. Shadows, long and sharp, lay across the patchy lawn, broken by the skeletal branches of the old oak tree. His own shadow, long and distorted, stretched ahead of him, a silent, menacing twin.

He walked, not knowing where he was going, just needing to move, needing to break the stillness inside him. His hands were stuffed deep in his pockets, knuckles white. He stopped near the old swing set, rusting now, a relic from a different life. He could almost hear her laughter, light and quick, the squeak of the chains. Lily. Her small hands, sticky with juice, reaching for him. Her bright, questioning eyes. He'd messed it up. He knew that. Knew it with a certainty that dug into his gut like a dull knife.

He started to sway. A slow, almost imperceptible movement at first. A rock from side to side, then a step, a half-turn. It wasn't a dance he knew, not a waltz or a fox-trot. It was something else. A desperate, solitary shuffle. He was trying to catch something in the air, or push it away. Sarah, her face etched with that weary disappointment, her voice low, even. "Arthur, you're not here. Not really." He remembered the exact tilt of her head, the way her hair fell. He tried to grasp it, that image, tried to hold onto the accusation, tried to make it solid.

He moved faster then, his breath coming in ragged puffs. He spun, stumbled, righted himself. A clumsy pirouette in the pale light. He was dancing with them. Not just Lily and Sarah, but all the versions of himself he'd hated, all the chances he'd fumbled, all the words he hadn't said, all the ones he had. They swirled around him, these phantoms of regret, their forms shapeless, yet heavy, pushing against him. He reached out, fingers splayed, as if to embrace a ghost, then pulled back, as if burned.

He dropped to his knees in the damp grass, chest heaving. The cold seeped into his jeans. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the shadows were still there, behind his lids, just as vivid. He could feel the weight of them, pressing down. All the things he couldn't fix. All the things he couldn't undo. He let out a choked sound, something between a sob and a growl. It scraped up from deep inside, raw and ugly.

Opening his eyes, he looked up at the moon, a distant, indifferent eye. It illuminated nothing but what already was. The broken swing. The overgrown rose bush. His own ragged silhouette. No answers. No grand revelations. Just the ache in his muscles, the cold on his skin, and the quiet understanding that some dances, you just keep dancing. He pushed himself to his feet, slowly, painstakingly, one heavy limb at a time. The air was still. The world was still. And he was still standing there, in the moonlight, feeling every goddamn thing.