Once in a moon
Over the course of the last year, I’ve learned to sit with that kind of love that lingers between fading and growing. A love that was meant to be placed somewhere—either locked away in a relic chest guarded by monsters in the dungeon, or scattered across the ocean of “they said it’s just a phase.”
Either way, I still hold it close, unsure where to put it.
I guess some feelings are meant to linger, not to be discarded or processed like a factory streamlining the production and destruction of love. And I wanted to believe that mine was the kind made by hand, with care. Just not cared enough for by him.
He didn’t hold it when he toured the museum where I had placed it. He glanced—three months, and then left in a hurry, on May 19th, 2024.
And still, I forget I left it there. I keep hoping he might remember one day and buy a ticket to visit again.
I had removed the glass that once sat above it. Maybe I thought he found it too precious to touch. Or maybe, like he said, “it was too much.” So I took off the price tag too.
I lifted the display glass. It wasn’t the Mona Lisa, I told myself. But he still didn’t care enough. He left in a hurry anyway. I suppose a day at the museum can be tiring for a tourist in an unfamiliar place.
Since then, the ticket has been too expensive for anyone else to visit.
As I was driving to the REC center to check off my ‘workout’ for the n-day streak on my app, I saw the horizon. The sky was blank, streaked with dark-shaded clouds and softer blacks, blending like a Chinese painting—ink and water, intentional and fluid.
Lightning flashed, quiet and distant, across the sky. It moved with the slow-burning music playing in my car—my favorite song lately, “Once in a Moon.”
It goes: “we would sing a song in harmony, if only you hadn’t left me.”
By the time I actually heard the thunder, the light had already passed. Just a soft poof, barely there, in contrast to the melody filling the car. Rain and thunder always seem fragile now, muffled by modern technology. My car has learned to block out every kind of noise.
Even the kind that still tries to reach me.
