Have You Got the Moon Safe? 
Published in Glassworks Magazine,  Issue 28

Inspired by a line from a Denise Levertov poem, this essay explores my own journey through motherhood, shaped by loss and grief, to articulate the difficulty of balancing profound fear and boundless love.

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I stuck glow-in-the dark stars on the ceiling of all his childhood bedrooms, standing on a chair to peel them off just before we moved and sticking them back up before nightfall. There was no moon in the imaginary night sky of his bedroom. I wished for him to have a moon, always full, radiant, and luminous, present even in its moments of growing smaller before it vanished. 

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I wanted to give him a steady presence, a sense of constancy and predictability. 

 

He slept under a moonless sky. I had surely failed.

 

I started to carry an imaginary moon everywhere with me, folded up inside a string bag, hoping it wouldn’t be crushed by a loaf of bread or a bag of clementines. 

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