Waxing or Waning by Sarah Freligh

You are driving on the lake road toward Canada when an orange moon presents itself to you, plump and juicy as ripe fruit.

Suddenly you’re hungry. You roll down your window and pick the moon from its dark branch leaved with stars.

You pretend this is a Garden of Eden where a god’s not watching.

Eve smiles. Finally. You’re driving fifty-five on a two-lane lake road, holding the moon on the meat of your palm.

Years later you will tell people you held the moon in your hand. The people will sip their drinks and nod, make small talk about the weather and the puff pastry appetizers that are out of this world. You will nibble a few, but nothing tastes as good as a single lick of that moon.

Years later you will drive the same road on the same night. You will wait for the moon to rise and squat on your palm. You will wait in vain.

You will hear the waves of the lake below you and the faint sound of laughter, juicy and full.

Sarah Freligh is the author of Sad Math (Moon City Press, 2015) and Sort of Gone (Turning Point Books, 2008). Her work has appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Brevity, Barn Owl Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Woman, Third Coast, Tar River Poetry, and Painted Bride Quarterly and on Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac.” Among her awards are a 2009 poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a poetry grant from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation in 2006, and an Artist’s Exchange grant from the New York State Council for the Arts in 1997. She is a visiting assistant professor of English and creative writing at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.