Moon's Day

Poem prompt: Sun’s Day, Moon’s Day—write a poem for Moon’s Day, today.

Moon’s Day

For years, a dripped stain on the bathroom’s trim bothered me. Yellow, like tree resin, or wood glue. Frozen in its downward motion. I tried to scrub it off, repeatedly. This November, after eleven years, I paint the bathroom. As though painting only entered my imagination this year. The energy has changed. I’m not longer scrubbing the walls, grimed by years of hands, feet. A bird just hit the clear plastic window in our living room as I typed. You must change your life, bird. You must paint. I’m not sure Coral Passion is the right choice for the small bathroom, but once you have the paint, it is up to your arm and wrist. I am tender this morning from motion. Moon’s Day reminds me that things were once beautiful, and that they can be new again. And that a new moon simply slips out of our visibility. Even the moon needs absence, rest, several days of darkness. I want to be a mushroom, melting back into the forest floor, I tell more than one therapist. The urge to disappear. I’ve already imagined my final words before the door of death and they are: this is going to be beautiful. Anyway, forget the sun, so yesterday. Today is the moon’s day. Embrace cycle and change, your phases and the phases of your children, their mighty small tides pulling at your body, releasing you against the rocks, the gritty beach. Once, I took an antidepressant that was small, round, white. Now, I take one that is pale blue, oblong. You can change your life. You don’t have to suffer, I tell my child. The waves of mood instability beat at our backs, pounding surf. The hormones and the histories. You can learn to be gentle in your life. You can stop scrubbing at the stain. Dip your brush in new paint. Swipe the surface clean as a wave the beach. The moon’s eye winks at you.