Spring Moon

He put his arms around her.
She said, "Why do you hate me so much?"

He carried her to the car, past the new flowers in their beds,
pinning her arms at her sides and never saying a word.

The night before, there had been a spring moon.
Their son awoke; the hour was odd.
"Mama, why are you staring at me?"

On the lawn, robins cock their heads, listening for vibrations.
The yard teems with worms. He starts the car.

In the parking garage at the hospital, she does her rag doll routine.
Dead weight and mute, he has to load her into a wheelchair.

They met in the early summer, years before.
He hadn't known where she had just spent the past few weeks.

At the doctor's first question, she leaps up from her chair and stalks across the hall.
"There's nothing wrong with me."

Here is the thing about a spring moon--
it will cross the darkness in its own way.

Nothing anyone can do can change the cycles she must pass through,
but once a month she is beautiful again.

He can't help watching as she loses her light by degrees, 
eaten away, becoming a memory, impossible to love any longer,
finally and at last unrecognizable.
_____________

"and the flowers bloom like madness in the spring" -- Jenny Anderson.

for Izy's Out Of Standard at Toads.