Moon. Light. by Stephanie Pritchard

Moon. Light.

poetry by Stephanie Pritchard

The moon woke me up, Mom. — My daughter at three years old.

I am always just half asleep these days - hovering in the in-between like a boat out to sea surrounded by gloom. Everything murky and muffled, but the nighttime sounds lulled beneath the surface

are still sounds, and when her mattress creaks I know she is stretching, she is coming out of sleep like a beaked whale rises from the depths for air. She finds her voice a moment later, a murmur like water lapping

over round stones. It almost harmonizes the white noise from her sound machine. But now there’s enthusiastic chatter across the hall and her hands clap while she giggles with the stuffed sheep and small bunny.

Her sweet exchanges would be welcome any other time, but it’s four thirty in the morning and my eyelids itch. I want earplugs and my own heartbeat soft and predictable between my temples like slow rainfall.

Instead, two bare feet pound the wall in sync with “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” vocals and the occasional cheer. When I drag my body into her bedroom, she yells “Hi Mom!” and her eyes shine in the dark like pearls. I think

of warm mud and oysters. Something about a waning moon, how shells widen at the hinge. Something about the intensity of the moonlight, how it drives this hunger, this insatiable need to be alive.