Moon in the Dark

Mountainous dunes of the sea angrily crashed all around. Not a crumb of land could be seen, only the torrent of nature’s wrath cascading. In the midst of the cacophony wavered a man who was without coat and hat. His sleeves flapped at his forearms. His hair danced a terminal gallop as his face shrunk and stretched. The man gripped the bars of his small craft as if they were some salvation.

The sun had disappeared in the mouths of angry, pluming clouds. Soon the faces of the rising and falling peaks all around would send him to a similar fate of cruel magic.

In darkness, he wept and clung to his metal life preserver. His ears were relentlessly buffeted by the storm. But his terror was louder than it all. “I must deserve this—I know I deserve this: to die as a speck.”

Flashes of passed anger, mistakes, jealousies, grudges, failings, desires consumed his mind. All the wrongs that condemned him to this violent demise proved his guilt. “This is just!” He shouted a mute declaration to the pitch-dark firmament.

Wallowing would be the punishment before the last.

Or maybe not.

Maybe his relief would clear some mud from his tortured mind. For nearly as soon as he decided to wallow, he saw his mom and dad before him in a grass patch surrounded by cookie-cutter homes. They were all smiles and spoke soundlessly. Soon they were joined by his brothers and sisters. They were as his parents: soundless and smiles. As his revelry proceeded, they all aged rapidly. His siblings turned their own ways and were joined by their spouses, and their children pranced about. His parents wrinkled and weakened. His mom looked to him for help his siblings neglected. His dad refused to look and only kept walking no matter the pains he winced at. The man’s heart sank because now he knew his punishment before the last was agonizing separation and loneliness.

“I deserve nothing better!” The spit of the sea was joined by his tears.

A wave lifted him up, pulling his skiff up its forming slope to drop him bottom up in a darkness he had grown accustomed to fearing but expecting. He reached the peak and was shocked.

Not realizing his eyes were open, from a chasm in the sky came a calm light casting away the utter darkness.

The man rose with the light’s smile. “What are you?”

The light kissed his cheek and sat him down. The mountains of maritime rage reduced to nothing as the torrent was quelled by the light’s strikes into the dark.

In the calm he danced along with the light— “the moon, my hero!”

“My moon, my hope!”

He kissed and hugged her rays and soon glimpsed another speck. “You’ve given me land!”

The man recommenced his duties of the craft and steered to the patch of earth.

“Land! Salvation! How can I ever thank you, my moon in the dark?”

She shifted in her seat and danced her rays around him, and they danced together.

He sang and bawled joyous, grateful tears.

“What brightens you so? How are you all light in such darkness?”

She only smiled her light at him and warmed his soul. His heart lifted from its depths.

A new shade of light slowly strolled out from the edge of the world.

“Where will you go? A blinding light approaches.”

He scampered to the shore and begged his Moon.

Yet again she only smiled.

He cried to sleep and woke red from the new light.

“Where is my moon, my hero in the dark? Will I only see her in the dark?”

He searched the firmament for hours it seemed. But “there she is? My moon…”

“You are there always, then. But brightest when I am with no light. My moon, you are my hope in the darkest place, and my companion in the lightest place.”

He sang until she became his only light again, then he rested in her calm sheen and comforting smile.