The Moon, Reading The moon looks in our bedroom window at us sometimes. As I lie down beside you, she pulls a silvery sheet over us, and then retreats to her silent night-time reading, east to west. Night after night that bright gaze moves over us lying under the comfort of being watched over. The round illuminated magnifying glass in Mama’s hands as she passed into dementia and understood less and less, her anxious eyes reading the same line over and over. The moon that shone in my window when I was little and supposed to have religion, so I knelt and prayed to that light, because she looked back at me. Everything earthly and imperfect changes under the moon. In this moment beside you I am perfectly happy, lying in the moon’s light, drifting slowly with you into illegible sleep. Minnie Bruce Pratt © 2019 "Minnie Bruce Pratt & Leslie Feinberg, Jersey City, 1995." Photo credit: Mariette Pathy Allen © 1995 "Minnie Bruce Pratt dishes up the moon, Syracuse, N.Y." Photo credit: Leslie Feinberg © 2014 Source
