If the Moon Never Had the Stars
Tonight I am the moon who never learned to count,
born into a sky empty as a mother's arms
after her children have been taken by war.
The darkness wraps around me like burial cloth,
thick and final as the silence that follows prayer
in a cathedral where no one comes anymore.
I hang here like a wound that refuses to heal,
a silver coin thrown into a well
that has no bottom, no echo, no answer.
The night is a desert where I am the only water,
but what good is water when there are no lips to drink,
no throats parched with the thirst of longing?
If you could see how I press my face
against the cold glass of eternity,
searching for even one small fire
to burn beside me in this endless winter.
I am a bride who waits at the altar
while the wedding guests slowly disappear
into the morning that swallows everything.
My light spills onto empty fields
where no shepherd counts his flock,
where no lover carves initials into bark,
where no child makes wishes on dandelions
blown into the wind like prayers
that God has stopped collecting.
I remember the taste of companionship
though I have never known it,
the way an orphan remembers
the weight of arms that never held him.
There is a hunger in my silver belly
for voices that sound like home,
for the gossip of distant suns
sharing stories across the void.
The earth below turns its seasons
like a mill grinding sorrow into flour,
and I watch the years pile up like snow
in the courtyard of a house
where the family died in their sleep
and no one came to wake them.
What is light without witness?
What is beauty without the sharp intake of breath
that says yes, I see you, I know you,
you matter in this brief moment
between being born and being forgotten?
I am the last candle in a city under siege,
burning alone while the walls crumble
and the enemy sleeps in the streets.
My flame is both rebellion and surrender,
defiance and the deepest grief
that comes when you realize
you will die as you lived,
singular and luminous and utterly alone.
Even my craters are empty theaters
where no applause has ever echoed,
where the only audience is the wind
that carries away my songs
before they can learn to become
the lullabies that rock the world to sleep.
Just realised I haven't posted anything in a while and yes, I saw this prompt last year and wrote this piece then. The beauty of it being that you can interpret it in different ways.🤍
