Charlotte Goss – ‘A Walk Home’

The moon is made of skin. The face of someone you once knew peering out from behind a lead-black curtain, beneath which only a glimmer of their feature’s shadows glow, like the suffused light you see when you close your eyes. They shyly watch as you plod towards home; peeping so that only one eye and half a nose and half a mouth and a sliver of a curved ribbon of a luminous, celestial face is visible. And when you look up there, their glance slides sideways and a smile plays upon their lips. So that the image of the moon flickers between a child from a distant memory…to a divine creature beyond reason. It’s painful to stare too long. More to know the face has to go. Because the light dazzles so brightly it bleaches away the silent silver drawing, smoothing out the strange smile, the nose, the hair, the eye that shimmers and breaks apart. I look away then. But it seems such a tug pulls down the stars that now still speckle in my eyes. I blink them away and walk. There is no more time for moon-gazing: all there is to do is trust in the hope that her smile was only guiding.