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Twin moons rest behind my eyeballs. They're why Mom says I have pretty eyes. Why they shimmer at night. Why when you walk by my house in the dark, and look up to my bedroom window, a faint glow will seep out through the cracks between my closed blinds, even though all my lights were turned off hours ago.



There's nothing else to me, other than the moons behind my eyes. I'm an empty book with a dazzling cover. I cannot live up to my gaze.



The moon is mythic, worshiped and revered. Teachers see my eyes and expect me to speak in verse and ancient tongues. They expect me to know the answers to all their questions. Even the ones they'd never ask in class. When what comes out is mumbled and jumbled and scattered, they quickly look away and never make eye contact again.



I'm more alone than the moon. I wear dark makeup and strange clothes. I watch from behind the open door of my locker, through the small metal vents, as the other girls giggle and pass notes and type messages with their thumbs into blinking silver cell-phones. None of their words are for me.



Words can't describe my aching. Words can't describe the pain. My doctor pretends to listen. Sometimes I think that she hears. But just when I start to rely on her, she too gets lost in my lunar stare.



There's a swamp behind my house. I go there when I don't want to feel. All the trees there are dead. Not a leaf. There's not even a path to get to the water. The dark brittle branches poke the skin on my knees and shoulders and cheeks as I stumble through. They snag my clothes, and tangle in my hair, but once I break free of their snaring grasp and arrive at the muddy embankment, my only thoughts are of the stream.



Its water's the color of rust from the thick mud below. I stare down at my reflection in its surface. Even my shining eyes are lost in its murky depths. A surge of wind makes my image warble. Behind me, the trees shiver. I take off my shoes and sit back in the cool mud.



My feet are blotchy and pink. My big toes are slightly crooked. I flick one with my fingernail, then tip my foot forward, pressing its ball into the damp earth. Nothing matters now, but the sensation.



Now, I don't have to be anyone. Now I can live in the moment. Now I can think, "Squirrels are funny," or "The sun makes me happy," without feeling I need to mask, or defend, or apologize for, the silly, simplistic sentiments.



Sometimes I roll up my pant legs. Sometimes I step into the stream. The brown water swallows me to the knees. My legs get itchy and numb. Forever, I stand there frozen, staring up at the fading sky, pretending to be not a girl with moons behind her eyes, but simply a branch or a weed or a vine stemming up from the stream, with nothing to worry about other than being.



But then the night sky brightens. Because of the rising moon. And my stare meets hers, and together we wonder if we even exist for ourselves at all. Or if we're only here for the people who see us. To bring to their lives a sense of something bigger, and eternal, and purposeful. To make them feel less lost. For them to gaze at, and point at, and wonder at, but to never really get to know.





............o.O