The moon is still in the sky as the sun comes up over the Judean mountains.

She doesn’t move doesn’t want to take her eyes off the moon. She wants to see exactly how it disappears to uncover mysteries like water that doesn’t boil while watched children grown when you turn around and parents aging.

Birds fly past it.

People and buses drive along.

The alarm clock rings again.

Maybe it was bigger seconds ago.

She’s sorry she hasn’t gotten around to getting her glasses  fixed so she could see what was eating away at the sides of the morning moon.

The dryer needs to be turned on so no one will be late.

A cloud covers a piece of the moon. The bottom quarter fades into it.

There is nothing like morning air. A new start a new chance.

Morning quiet.

She doesn’t want to pull herself away from the moon.

It would be irresponsible to watch the moon instead of make
sandwiches. Maybe it was something she could do as a child like when she’d sit
and wait on the porch at dawn for the milkman to come. The pleasure of cold
milk in glass bottles clanking in the morning quiet.

When she gets back to the window the moon is almost gone
and so is her interest in watching it.

By the time sandwiches are packed the moon is out of sight.

She doesn’t know what so attracted her to this morning’s moon.
Why the vision stays in her head as she makes all the beds except the one she
falls into. Pulled by the slumber that calls she doesn’t find a reason not to
fall into bed.

Her strength waning she disappears inside herself.

It’s not that anything terrible happened not more terrible
than yesterday or the day before.

Or maybe it’s just today that it feels like she’s been
doing a life dance that goes twelve steps forward and thirteen back.

Nothing will happen for one day she convinces herself giving herself permission to wane for a day because I’m not scared I won’t come back in full.

It gets too dark for a minute.

She calls a friend to shine some light.

“You sound tragic” her friend comments.

“I am tragic” she says. “I don’t want to do
anything.”

“What don’t you want to do?” her friend asks.

“Make lunch.”

“So then get up and make lunch” her friend says. “Do
anything you don’t want to do this is what strengthens.”

She sits up but falls back down. She allows herself the
temporary eclipse justifying it as the darkness before the dawn.

“Do what you don’t want to do …  it strengthens.” She hears  her friend’s encouragement.

Go against your tides against your nature.

She sits up.

One step at a time she opens the door and heads to the kitchen. Her husband’s in the kitchen. He greets her. It’s a new year a new chance a new start.

She finds her smile. It shines like the morning moon.