My Silver Moon

As a little girl, I was often scared of the dark. My young mind imagining the worst possible terrors that could crawl their way out of the shadows and haunt me. I awoke on several nights and would sob, my wails seeping through the thin, plaster walls of one of our very first homes, and would not stop until my mother came to comfort me with a flick of the light switch. 

There were several evenings as I grew older, after church, as my father drove me home, where I would stare out the window, intimidated by the eerie clawing branches of the trees who transformed out of the pure light of the sun and became demons instead. 

And when my father finally put the car in park in our driveway, I would run out of the dark and into the embrace of the golden light of our front room to escape all of the possible terrors that ran rampant in my imagination. 

I dreaded the fall of night, the chill that crept into my bones when I was left alone after the sun had gone to sleep. I would grow drowsy as I prayed to wake up with the sun, curled up beneath my blankets, no matter how hot I was, just to prevent the creatures that lurked in my closet and under my bed from grabbing me by my scrawny ankles and ripping me away from the warmth of my house. 

Sleepovers with friends taunted me, nights spent in the guest room of my grandmother’s house filled my heart with a palpitating terror until one night I finally noticed the glowing pearl sitting in that dark sky. 

A slow drive home back from somewhere that now I can’t recall. My tired head resting against the glass of my mother’s SUV, sleepy eyes drooping as if my lashes had been laced gently with molasses. Somewhere in my drowsy state, I noticed the soft white light that illuminated my skin. 

I lifted my head to look up and out, watching as that pearl in the sky, the Moon, with her hazy, ivory glow and meteor-carved facial features, followed us along our drive down the winding, tree-lined roads. 

It awoke me, seeing her glide across the velvety, midnight sky, seemingly watching over us along our dark journey back to the warmth of our little townhouse. 

And it was not just on that night that I noticed her, the Moon, following me around wherever I went. She sat behind me sleepily in the sky as I sat around a golden bonfire with my cousins; she shined beautifully above my head like a halo as I chased my friends around a backyard, laughing while the adults drank and talked; and that night, a cold night years ago that sent a shudder up my spine and made my bare toes on the concrete feel like ice, my father took me and my younger brother by the hand and led us outside into the dark. Under the blanket of what usually would’ve been nothing more than a tenebrous night, the Moon glowed all the brighter, perfect and full. 

She had seemed so close, heavy and alight in the bruised sky. I thought that if I perched myself on the tips of my toes and stretched my small fingers up just a little bit higher, then surely I could’ve brushed them gingerly along her rough and pearlescent cheek. 

Young and still in awe of her lustrous wonder, I hardly noticed the way my father ushered me and my brother back inside, speaking of a coyote that had stood right outside. Just across the street from us. 

And it was only thanks to the Moon’s full and milky glow that he was able to see it. 

It was then, at that moment, I believe, that I realized the Moon was not just watching me, but watching out for me. She became my beacon in the dark, leading me home safely from a friend’s house up the road, illuminating the lapping ocean waves I walked knee-deep into collecting seashells, showing me the iridescent fish that swam against my feet, almost as if she were holding me by the hand, leading me in the right direction. 

Keeping me safe. 

Protecting me. 

As a little girl, I was scared of the dark. As a teenage girl now, I’m scared of other things that lie beyond that thin memory of childhood. I walk the earth with many a superstition tucked into the back of my mind, but the Moon, I know, will always be there for me. Even if she is less visible during the day when the sun has risen once more. I follow the Moon everywhere that I go now, certain as always that her silky light will always protect me. 

And she is the reason I wear her crescent smile on a silver chain around my neck. 

My silver Moon, my protector. I would never dare to leave the house without her glinting prettily against my chest.