For ADG
Very nearly eight years old, Ellie Kate, a mere slip of a
girl, bounded down the hill behind her house. Hair up in a scrunchie, arms out,
she shouted, “To the moon! To the moon! To the moon!”
Her mother called to her. “Ellie! Ellie Kate, you are
going break something!”
Ellie’s flight took her to the back fence where she stood
laughing beneath a cherry tree. She looked back at her mother and waved. Her
mother shook her head and went inside their home.
Ellie jogged up to patio, her launching pad for her runs.
She rocked a bit back and forth and off she went. Something in the moment, both
feet off the ground, the earth falling away from her, landing hard on the balls
of her feet—inside a song, alive-alive-alive-o!
After half a dozen dashes, Ellie came back in the house
and plopped down at the breakfast table. “The moon was in my room last night,”
she told her mother.
“That’s nice, dear.” Her mother handed her a small plate
with apple slices and a few bite-sized chunks of fresh mozzarella.
“It was orangey and then really, really white.”
“Did you finish your homework?”
“Yes.”
Ellie picked up a piece of cheese and slice of apple and
ate the two together. That moon, she thought, funny it gets in my room.
Even last night, she watched the moonlight make the
blinds glow, bright enough so she could see across her room to her desk where
she kept her pencils and markers and drawing books.
If she squinted, her stuffed unicorn, Aurelia, looked
like a velvet cabbage, and that made her laugh.
“I’m going to my room.”
Her mother looked at her. “Bed made?”
“Yes.”
“Clothes off the floor?”
“Yes.”
In her room, Ellie went to the interior wall next to her
bed. With her fingers on her right hand she traced along an irregular path from
left to right. That’s where she finds the moon.
Just like last night. She swung her legs out from under the
sheet and stood. The orange streak as if light through a fine crack in the wall
appeared. Tap, tap, tap, her fingers softly along the light source.
Ellie pulled down with her fingers, gently, and the
opening widened. Just a bit, enough for her to slip in her hands. Now she could
push up and pull down, wider now the gap, more of the moon showing.
Suddenly, she gasped, “What?” A shadow. Flying across.
Something. An owl? Maybe an owl.
Her hands pushed and pulled, tugged and scooped, until
the moon was full round and her room awash now in the glow from within.
Ellie got back under the sheet and turned on her side
facing the great orange moon. Later that night, she opened her eyes, and the
moon, her moon, was much smaller and white. Morning would come.
She pulled the sheet to her chin and closed her eyes.
Lyman,
2021
