Winter Moon
Sara Rauch
Dear Moon,
The sky is too flat to see you, but I know you are there. Once things move into the past, once they can no longer be seen or held or altered, that is when they most hold my attention.
Dear Moon,
I forgot to look for you for many days. It was my birthday, and I was preoccupied. This morning I woke before everyone else. You hung above the koi pond like a scythe. But, curiously, you had a tail. Like the special ç the French use—I thought it was called a comme ça until I looked it up. It is actually called c cédille. Comme ça means “like that,” mini moon. Anyway, the sky is bright, and you are gone. Snow everywhere. I drink coffee and wait, though I don’t know for what.
Dear Moon,
I confess I am alive. Don’t always know what that means. Are you alive? Does the word mean
breathing
sentient
aware
embodied?
I wish someone would tell me what “love” actually is. Instead, they call me beautiful and fierce. My husband praises my homemade baked goods, which are legitimately terrible. For my 16th birthday, I tried to make my own cake—it turned out like a pink cellulose sponge. My mother drove to the bakery and bought a replacement. I persist in baking sweets despite my failures.
Dear Moon,
Yesterday, the phrase “moon witch” came into my head without warning. The word “witch” is attractive—but I am drawn to it only to find myself repulsed. I cannot be your moon witch.
Once, as a young girl, I called my mother a witch—because she would not make me soup for lunch instead of a sandwich—and she slapped my face. She still talks about it, the word, not the slap. Sandwiches hold no charm, despite how much I love bread. Not all bread. Fresh bread. Bread I do not make myself, not willing to mess up, but buy at a bakery.
A witch is a woman—or not a woman, because witches, despite centuries of persecution, are inclusive—who cannot be tamed. I did not understand my mother’s reaction then, but I do now. The word witch cuts too close to the bone, is too revealing—best to stay away from what one has disavowed.
Dear Moon,
The love letter, as a genre, has certain conventions. Praise of beauty, longing for togetherness (as a love letter should never be written in proximity), salutations of till next time, because the love letter assumes before and again.
Moon, I don’t know you in any familiar sense. You shine or don’t shine, you force the tides. You are muse. You are a ghost.
What is it about the unknown that is so appealing, while what is right before the eyes easily loses luster?
I allowed the kids to stay home for a “snow day,” though their school didn’t call it. We practiced cursive handwriting, rescued a frog from the koi pond filter, ate pretzel rolls, drew, ordered twenty-four blank notebooks, played with a calculator—all before 10 a.m. The snow begins. I do not know what phase you are in, though I could find this information online with a few clicks. You are a mystery: science explains you, and yet, there seems to be much more we do not know.
Dear Moon,
A few years ago, an editing client told me attention equals love. I have encountered this phrase elsewhere, and on some level, agree. If you love something or someone, attention is a pure gift, an offering few material gifts can match. But his argument—after he had overstepped all unspoken employee/employer boundaries (such as they exist, in amorphous freelance territory) and told me I was one of the great loves of his life, an intellectual soulmate, and I severed contact (which did not stop him sending twenty-plus emails a day or frequent, delusional letters)—his argument for my supposed participation in this imagined connection, was that I had paid him attention: responded thoughtfully to his emails, engaged thoughtfully with his essays. Attention equals love, he said, more than once, in the hundreds of emails I did not answer.
I admit this gave me pause. Had I done something wrong? Was I—to blame?
The attention I paid was compensated monetarily. There are many things/people we pay attention to because of obligation—financial, social, cultural, familiar or otherwise—and while we may indeed develop affection (a type of love?) for these things/people, to say we “love” them is false.
Perhaps, moon, you will deem me a romantic (you won’t be the first) for my unwavering belief that love must be given freely for it to truly be called love. Attention, too. I suppose this gets us into the territory of what “free” or “freely” means. Is anything free? I don’t have a solid answer to that. But I have thought about love enough to say, with confidence, that love must necessarily be its own entity, and so must attention. They might exist together, but they are not synonymous, nor equivalents.
I might be a romantic, but I gave up on the concept of soul mates long, long ago. My soul wants to be left alone to wander as it pleases.
Oh, moon,
I have not seen you in many days. Patience has never been my virtue. Mystery appears in short shrift—I know too much about too many things. I miss not knowing. Why do humans want all the answers? What do we think we will gain from knowing it all? We blame Eve; we say the apple represented knowledge (I’ve heard a rumor that the forbidden fruit was a pomegranate, which makes more sense), that she desired to know. Why didn’t she ask permission? Perhaps it is true that it is easier to ask for forgiveness. I admire Eve; I owe her a debt. I doubt she wanted to leave a boot print on your face.
Dear Moon,
More snow. The sky is a shield, the clouds rarely part. As it turns out, you were full only a few days ago. This is why I make a terrible witch and terrible lover. I am half-hearted. One half of my heart is very bright, reflective, magnificent; the other is shadowy, untraversed, and little understood. Are you protective of your own dark side? Is that why you turn away?
p.s. Long ago, I loved freely; now, I am quite reserved. I remain unsure which I prefer.
Dear Moon,
A person like me appears to be a prime target for the soul mate thing. I trust déja vü; I “hear” plants and animals; I find god in all things. I go barefoot as often as possible. But consider the earthing movement foolish. I am squeamish about past lives, reserve my doubt for know-it-all humans, question the theism in pantheism. How can a romantic and a cynic coincide? I have no answer, only this evidence.
Dear Moon,
There you are, so close and yet so far. You will never write me a love letter. Your presence, seen or unseen, never wavers; your cycles are for all to see. Even me.
Dear Moon,
The thing about winter is, you don’t have to believe it will end. But the belief helps, somehow.
Dear Moon,
Sometimes I don’t think of you at all. How’s that for love?
Sara Rauch is the author of WHATSHINES FROM IT: STORIES and XO. Her work has appeared most recently in Vast Chasm, Cutleaf, The Spectacle, Revolute, and Paranoid Tree. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.
www.sararauch.com (substack: Sara Rauch / bsky: @sara-rauch.bsky.social)
 | A guest post by
|