Eclipsed

Paralysed in bed, my unwavering gaze rests on a waning moon who smiles at me. A girl dangles her legs off the edge of the crescent, a dying star tied to the end of her makeshift fishing rod. She wears a paper crown and has crooked teeth that hang slightly over her mouth and morning dew on her dark lashes. I see her through my window but the distance grows between us as my room expands. She tells me to be wary of the moth that violently beats itself to death against the walls in a dark room without ever having found his light. I light the candle at its wake. So tragic. All suffering feels poetic under the moonlight of the girl with the paper crown. 

The crooked toothed girl doesn’t notice the boy who sits on the sun in front of her. He has golden hair and cheeks as red as his wobbly, scraped knees. He finds it hard to sleep in the blinding light sometimes. He huffs and he puffs, cranking the engine of the sun to keep himself warm. How tired he gets! But oh, how he fears the cold. That overbearing, authoritative, strict cold — the one that makes his face go pale. He cannot see the stars, or the planets, or the moon behind him through his fires. 

The girl casts her line out with her now dead star tied to the end. The stars swirl around it. She reaches out, grabbing one as the others swim away. The star struggles under her white knuckles.

“You don’t kiss me anymore,” she says, the morning dew on her lashes again. The star slips out and escapes. “Why don’t you kiss me anymore?” she shouts after it angrily. How tired she gets! But oh, how she craves the light. That distant, unattainable, detached light — the one that makes her eyes sparkle. She can only see the shadow of the planets, and the dying light of stars given up. 

I watch shadows flicker and flit against a warmly lit wall, where the boy and girl curiously approach each other, eclipsed. They are the soft tide of a calm ocean on a hot evening. The warmth of a hand in a glove on a snowy day. She invites him to her moon and the breeze cools the sweat off his brow, and she weaves him a blanket from the night sky. He takes her hand and leads her to his sun, where the tiny stars feed off his light. She claps and laughs and chases them, the sparkle in her eyes growing ever more. 

When they part ways, I see them tearfully say their farewells. They kiss and they hug, like how the earth comforts the rotting. 

I see her now, casting out her woven blanket on her line, to her boy in the sun. He stops his engine, points towards her, lighting all the stars and planets between them, and catches it, wrapping it around himself, his cheeks no longer red. And while he rests his weary head, she softly glows. All contentment feels absolute under the moonlight of the girl with the paper crown who no longer needs the tiny stars to see her light.