love letter to the moon
By Avery Letendre
Nights like these are full,
the light so bright we can easily trace its track
through the clouded blue night-dark sky,
and so
nights like these, I
stand still in the sidewalk and stare
up into unparalleled beauty,
and I talk to you.
And we giggle,
secrets passing between us like so many stars flitting across the heavens—
confidants till the end of the world,
continually bridging the chasmic divide of space and time—
and I celebrate just to know you, to share my joys with you
and make your joys mine.
Nights like these are waning,
smaller, maybe, emptier, surely,
but lonelier? I don’t think so,
because even when anxiety chokes my spine
and tears choke my eyes
and my stomach unravels and the walls fall in
and I’m crumbling to pieces all across the sidewalk,
I still
have only to look up
and whisper to you through the salt on my lips
and the night still comes to seem
a little bit brighter.
I murmur my fears, my shortcomings, every negative thing I have
to say about myself,
and you seem to pat me
gently, glowingly, on the head,
while the stars shimmer soothingly as the backdrop to it all,
and you let me rest with you awhile,
and all the while, you tell me:
“It’s fine, it’s okay, because you
are not broken. You’re only rolling the dice
with disadvantage,
and that’s fine too.”
Nights like these are new,
fresh,
darker but only because it’s
darker before the light,
and some new light is always coming,
invisible and uncertain except for a hint of its shape around the edges, perhaps,
frightening in its blacked-out mystery, sometimes,
but I am ready for it nonetheless because I know I’ll get to face it
with you.
Every time I get so hung up on that unseen unknown, on
squinting to make out what the future will hold, that I
miss a step and tumble to the ground,
lost on a late-night walk to the end of the world,
swirls of infinity painting a swathe of the sky beyond us,
I still have only to look up and think of you,
or ask for a hand,
and you will help pull me to my feet with reassurances that
none of us have it all figured out and
promises that we’ll keep figuring out it together
and memories of laughter and tears,
bright sunglasses and silly voices and hands held close enough to keep the pitch-black at bay,
and I can find comfort in the belief that
no matter how terrifying the darkness ahead,
nights like those will come again.
Nights like these are waxing,
expanding,
reaching to fill so much more of the sky and the world and the space in between,
and I know that I am mirroring that growth because
I look up and find that I’m a whole new person
every night
but still talking to you, always talking to you;
the constellations swirl around us and I find
you’re there for me no matter where they are,
and that makes me certain I’m growing along a route I know I’ll like,
because I want to be the kind of person
that you like.
So I keep looking up,
and every time something new comes along and
pulls thick clouds across to block my path,
you help me find my way around them, through them,
gusting the wisps away to create a brighter, clearer openness than before—
and a happier one, too,
to have had your hands take part in its unveiling.
Nights like these are full.
Full of feeling and friendship and a funny sense of finality,
though I know that won’t last because
it all comes back around again—
but I know you’ll be there for all of it.
So I’m content to simply be joyous, on nights like these—
to be joyous about you, knowing you, loving you,
because I do, so very much it grips me by the ribs and screams to be let out,
so I’ll let it out as best I can every time I have the chance
to run out into the night and meet you,
to tell you about my day and hear about all of yours in turn,
to rant and tease about silly people and sillier topics
until we’re blue in the face from insisting that we’re right about the number eight
or the impression we can do of each other
or anything else under the starry sky, and then we go on to
giggling and passing secrets across the borders of space and time zones,
confidants till the end of the world,
giddy to be sharing in each other’s joy
through all the phases of life.
Yes, nights like these, I
think I’ll just continue
to stare up at the beauty of the moon,
her gentle light limning the world as I
think of you,
and know that,
across the world though you might be,
you’re looking up at her, too.
The Trinity Review 