M.C. Frank

Conversations with an Empty Chair (2) - Moon Night

How can so much pain be contained in just one person?

I miss you.

And it hurts.

There was a full moon the other night. You know I haven’t been able to look at the moon ever since you left. It wasn’t full that night, but it was fairly bit -almost full. It was early spring, the weather that makes you want to start wearing t-shirts and lift your face to the sun.

Well, I wore black for that whole month, and a few years after it. I still do, actually, I don’t have the heart to wear anything else. Carrying off a little darkness on my back, so that my soul will feel lighter. It doesn’t.

Anyway, the night the men with the box took you away, I was there. I saw them take you. I lifted my eyes to the skies, just as I’d done a million times in the past, looking for answers. For inspiration. For an escape.

And there it was.

The moon. Mocking me, with its beauty, its constance, when my world had been shattered. 

There’s a story in a Ray Bradbury book about an astronaut who went out to a different star every month. His wife and son were left behind, wondering if he would die this time. Wondering which star they’d never be able to look at. He ended up dying in the sun. They kept their shutters closed every day since then. Refused to look at the sun, cause it had taken him from them.

That’s how I feel. The night that took you away was fragnant and clear and beautiful. There was an almost full moon. I hated it. I still do.

Someone says: “Gosh, look at the moon, isn’t it pretty?”

I just turn my head aside.

They don’t know how it feels to look at the thing that just stood there and mocked you and looked on while you lost a part of your soul. They never will.