My sleep is tenuous, thin as impossibility,
so I lumber from bed, balance footing, fumble
into the dining room, and slump into my recliner.
I don’t turn on a lamp. Dark enfolds me
the way I need to be held at 5:40 a m.,
the true embrace of belonging absent,
in abeyance because there is no one else
in the house to offer comfort or company.
I think of John Singer, in Carson McCuller’s
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, who is driven
by an unbearable sense of loneliness. I swivel
my chair around to face the window, immediately
overwhelmed by the sight of the moon, white
as relief, grateful to be connected to something
besides burgeoning dismay. There is nothing now
but the moon and I coupled like shameless lovers
by a celestial path of illumination. I stare transfixed,
wrapped in arms the color of frost. I turn back
to the unlit room disbelieving, and when I turn again
to the window, clouds have darkened the sky, obliterated
my connection to a few seconds of healing light,
an instantaneous salvation for which I had not bargained.
I face the dining room once more, certain now that
one on one with the moon wasn’t a lie.
