The moon, she lies in wind you know.

The air is heavy and moist as I speed home, the lights glittering in the new night. I can smell the ocean, it’s shores stolen from me by kilometre, by time and tree. But I can feel it, sinking beside me, absorbed to my skin like so much velcro or kelp, floating.

It is all shifting, this life. These lives.

I walk in my door, stumble more like it, across a dark gravel and potty lawn, and up the steps to my old wood deck. I tangle with cats as I open the door, hear the silence of rest down the hall, my children safe dreamers in the corner room. The sea carries to them too, monsters, adventures, memories they’ve yet to birth. The lights glimmer against the ink sky as the moon sets, a dull orange candy widened, and a whisper is made, a promise I spoke aloud once, years before.

I do not recall it, not in words. But it had wings, and petals. Shone silver in the light of a wet road.

Fall comes. Fall opens her woolen coat, stretching her arms peaceful through it’s sleeves, readying herself. The twilight calm a penance she’s paid, a held moment before the pricking months descend. Her breath is dusty like a new lover, and mewing, only a thought on the wind yet.

Yet.

She grasps this moon, this snake which gnaws itself, the scent like ribbons on the breeze which captures my eyesight. She holds it still for us to gasp aware for, suddenly children again, suddenly wanting and misty with the echo in our lungs.

Her hands cradle my cheeks,  her fingers just the edge of chill, eyes the color of deep water and death. From her skin rises the earth and water scent of melancoly and unattended, a pale wounding in how she misses something she can no longer name.

A kiss she gives. Before the light moves off the milky world, off my daggered arms. A gentle nudge before she casts off, windless.

Her voice a memory, a mere falsehood in time.

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