The Last Moon in September

I told her I wanted to be free. She said you can. Sharpen your pencil and start a new story. Draw a new face, an ugly face on a wall somewhere in the clean city. Scratch with colored pencil and charcoal the white asylum walls where you spend many moons without a window. It's the last moon in September. That's when all stories begin. That's when you'll remember your story began.

Her name was the night. She knew I was born to be lonely, and she came to be lonely with me. I built a small sand castle and let her in. I cried as I was leaving. But it was written that I would never leave.

She said I was beautiful. But she's the night and everything is beautiful in her eyes. When she throws her black cape over the desolate city, the spiders and the monsters hide between old bricks and under sidewalk trees, and all you see are shining apartment windows, sleepless cars, shaded lamps on old porches, and flickering red and green neon lights. She said we were all beautiful. I crawled out and fell asleep on a bed of her eyelashes.

It's the last moon in September. They say nothing ever changes. But I will sharpen my pencil and scribble a new story on a dirty wall. Maybe then I will forget all my ugly faces. Maybe I will remember who I am.