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The moon is beautiful when she shines. She lights my way and paves my tenebrous road with a path I can follow. She is there during my brightest dawns and she is there during my dimmest, starless nights. But I know that light isn’t really her own, it’s nothing more than a reflection. I’ve lived with the moon for just over a decade, but I’ve have never seen the moon shine for herself. The illusion of her brilliance is convincing, but it would be nothing without the sun there for her to mirror.
The sun is everything to her. She takes its light in through different ways — needles, pills, or up her nose — but it’s what keeps her shining. Some days, she only shines for her sun. It pulls her attention away from everything else, even me. Night by night, her attention would wane until I’m only facing her dark side, her irritation and anger, her terror and violence. Her darkness hurts. It leaves me with bruises and cuts and cigarette burns as I tumble down the path she had been lighting for me mere moments before. The new moon always comes, and it never goes without injury. You would suppose that after so long of waning and new moons, I’d become numb to her pain and the misery of her darkness, yet here I am.
Even now I cradle the arm covered in small and large cuts, from which I had taken out dozens on dozens of glass splinters from the empty bottle my moon threw onto my path. It had been two weeks since I’d taken them out, but I could still see the pair of pink, glittery tweezers sit next to the shards of green on my desk in my mind. They aren’t here now, but the memories never truly leave me. My eyes slide to the object that actually is on my desk, the picture of the two of us on my twelfth birthday. She was full that night. It had happened before that my birthday fell on new moons; those ones are memorable in their own way I suppose. I hope my thirteenth also falls on a bright night.
It does not stay dark forever, for the full moon also finds a way. One day, soon after the new moon, her light would happen upon the injuries inflicted on me. She takes pity on me and slowly, her brightness would grow fuller and fuller. But the light would never leave the sun, no. Instead, she would just readjust her own position so her daughter could have some place in her light, before she would once again get distracted by the sun. Before once again, the darkness was all I could see.
There are times worse than the new moon. Times when suddenly, her light vanishes at its brightest. The scariest part is that I can never see it coming. The lunar eclipse is rare, but it comes without warning. She hides away from everything, everyone, even the sun. But she leaves me in the shadows all by myself, just as she does now, the wheels of her car barely making a noise against the asphalt of her road and the engine purring lightly as she slowly drove away. I would not have even noticed her leaving if it hadn’t been for the bulb she lit in the kitchen to look for her keys, the white shining through the gap beneath my door. The light is just as white as the moon’s, but clinical, always in sharp contrast to the moon’s warmth.
My feet thud lightly against wooden planks as I slide out of bed, taking me to the bathroom as the last of the leftover heat from my blanket seeped into the much colder world around me. The red splatters on the white tiles, bloody water in the bathtub, and dripping army knife next to the sink are all the indication I need to know what happened. I used to think that the moon would cry because she was hurt, but on the last eclipse, I found her hurting herself because she was crying. I still don’t understand, but if the blood stays too long on the on the tiles, it begins to stain and the mean landlady yells at my moon, bringing her down further and making her hurt herself more.
I take a red towelette and work on the splatters while the water makes a whirlpool in the tub. I spy more blood and an empty pillbox on the toilet seat, there is no clearer sign of an eclipse than the moon hiding from the sun. I wring the cloth into the sink and watched the red drain. I spray down the bathtub with the sputtering showerhead, doing my best to not use too much water. Even if I do, I just won’t shower for the next few days, I’d rather go to school smelly than risk raising the water bill and splotching my moon with red.
I wonder what pushed her today. Why did she hurt herself? Why did she leave? The questions crowd me as I follow a trail of blood with a damp cloth to the moon’s chambers. I looked at the normally pristine dresser, one of her most treasured possessions because her true sun had made it before he died. What she has now is nothing more than a replacement for the light he gave her, for the love they had. The moon tells me stories of him all the time and how much I would love him and how much he would love me. I only barely remember the sun, so maybe I don’t understand, but if anyone is that important, that my light begins to depend on them and I can no longer shine for myself, then it doesn’t seem like they would be very good for me. But my moon loves him now even in hindsight, so there is nothing more I can do than just nod and agree with what she says. I wonder if the moon can shine for herself at all.
The dresser was not pristine today, it had been desecrated, by seemingly her own hand. I run my fingers along the jagged, untidy carvings, made probably by the knife that currently resided in a whole in the wall. She must’ve thrown it hard because it is more than halfway in, even if it is a small one. I try to decipher the desperate writing but can’t get more than “bad mother” and “good enough”. Why would she think she’s a bad mother? My moon shines alongside me for so many of my victories, often guiding me to them. What more is a mother meant to do? My mind flashes back to earlier in the evening when she noticed the glass pieces on my desk. She seemed horrified and at the time I thought it was because of me and the mess I had made… but could it be because she had hurt me?
More memories flood me of past eclipses and the dots begin to join in my mind. This is what happens every time. This is what always makes her eclipse. A warmth fills my chest, my moon hides from the sun because she cares about me, but it leaves just as quickly as it came. If she cares so much about me, then why does she leave me? Why does she leave my path dark? Why does she snuff out the light I so desperately await every cycle? Perhaps it’s the only time she can see it, when her light shines so brightly that she illuminates my blemishes making her notice all she’s done, even if she doesn’t want to. My eyes slide to the remaining cuts on my arm. Yes, it hurts, but my moon abandoning me hurts more.
I quickly finish cleaning up the blood and rinse out the cloth in the bathroom before raiding its closet for supplies. I bring them all to my bed and lay them out so I can see my cache. Band-Aids, cleaning alcohol, gauze, tape, and whatever else I could find. It’s plenty to last me a few cycles. I quickly clear them into my last drawer, under the few clothes I have that are too hot to wear during the current humid summer. In all my clothes, I had one long-sleeved shirt and two jumpers. I bite my lip, this isn’t enough. Tomorrow afterschool, I’ll go to the lost and found and try to find more thing I can wear to cover up any cuts and bruises I might get. I don’t know how long this eclipse will last but I will try my hardest to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Who knows, I might even have everything ready before my moon reappears. I go to my desk to see our photo again and promise myself that the moon will be shining on my next birthday. My cracked watch catches my peripheral and I realise that it’s already past midnight. I lie down in bed and fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. During the night I feel a hand brush my cheek and through my half-closed eyelids, I see my moon’s bright blonde hair covering her bright face, her blue eyes sunken in from the waning influence of the sun and her lack of sleep.
“It’ll be different this time, Gaia, I really will get better,” my moon tells me, and from the deepest part of my heart, I hope it’s true.
Written by Arshia Gupta
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