Moon Daughter
Dan Albergotti
 
You smiled coyly when you said you wanted
to name our daughter Destiny, our daughter
who does not exist. And you smiled when I
suggested Chaos instead. But since she is not

and cannot be, let us make our daughter now
the nameless moon. We could expect her then
to arrive each month, growing from first to full,
fading from last to new, our own daughter

with skin as pale as every evening’s light.
At times her pallid face would be obscured,
a perfect stone lying on heaven’s riverbed,
washed smooth by a slow current of clouds.

But other times she would be alone in the sky
and would shine, surrounded by her ever-growing hair,
gone from auburn to black, absorbing all light
around her face like everything that never dies.
  

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