Different Orbits

We walk back to the car pausing to stare up at a clear November sky made for dreaming.  His arm riding lightly around my shoulders, mine about his waist.  We have been disagreeing, but have called a momentary truce to witness such an evening.  This silence feels a balm after that contentiousness. 

He offers to give me the moon as if he is the earthly successor to George Bailey himself.  As if I couldn’t get the moon for my own damn self if I wanted it.  I know it is a gesture on his part of what he is willing to give me.  But the moon – really? 

I am a woman.  I was born with the moon in my pocket.  She has been my confidant since conception. She has followed me since I was born watching, waiting.  Eager for me always like a lover.  Every month we have danced together, she and I, as sisters, naked to the drums – faster and faster until the blood comes.  The very celebration of blood that creates the world instead of destroying it.  Give me the moon?  Why would you offer to give me something I so clearly possess already?  Besides, you can’t give me something you have no idea how to wrangle.  And it is plenty clear that you understand neither of us. 

And so I ask, Why do you not offer me the sun?  

He looks puzzled as if that line has always gotten him laid in the past and that I am the first to question it.  I stand waiting for his answer which comes in the form of spread hands and shrugged shoulders.  A look so pathetically cute, that I throw him a bone instead of blowing his hair back.  The evening has seen enough fighting.  Instead I sigh and try to explain.   

I don’t want to be the moon to your sun.  That is the old way – the way that we have been for two thousand years – the way that doesn’t work.  I don’t want to be the one who shines no light of her own, the one who simply reflects your greatness back to you. 

He looks confused, I sense he isn’t following the metaphor. 

I don’t want to be relegated to being the moon stuck in orbit to your sun.  I want to be my own sun and moon.  To make my own light. To reflect back all the wonderful things I see in the world including you.  I want to be my own solar system, my own galaxy, a cosmos entire unto itself.

Now he just looks tired, a look I have seen many times.  His tiredness becoming a shield against any further discussion.  The end is coming.  We both sense it.  So we both go back to contemplating the moon each in our own world, thoughts incomprehensible to the other.