Afterwards the Moon (when my cat died)
It was a large white disk low in the sky. It didn't glow. It was cloud color. And kind of defiant about it. I stopped walking down the slant of hill and said, wow.
What are you supposed to do with the moon? In another time, another era, maybe I would have raised my arms, or genuflected or offered something to the fact it was there, rising as it always promises to do.
Something real and solid but still ephemeral. Mysterious, because while reliable you never know when you’ll see it or where. Or what it will look like. The moon is hard to pin down.
I resumed walking, but looked for it again between the buildings. I looked. But the clouds had shifted and were darkening to blue. It was no longer there. I’ll never see it like that again, that size, that color, framed in just that way. The moon was gone. A single granule of time.
These moments as they slip by are baffling. Not designed to be held. The heat of life pressed against my chest, as I tenderly cradled its bones and fur. And then the life is gone, slips into invisibility. My eyes cannot adjust. My eyes cannot stay wide enough to take it all in.
Yet still I search the skies.
© 2024 Lisa Marguerite Mora
Bio: Lisa Marguerite Mora has been published widely including in Chiron Review, Rattle, Literary Mama, Public Poetry Series, California Quarterly, Rebelle Society, Serving House Journal, semifinalist Tom Howard Poetry Contest, First Place winner Micro Fiction for Dandelion Press. Nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Her first novel is searching for a home while she writes a second.
