I Will Reflect Your Light – Amélie Robitaille

The far moon creases into a
tinfoil ball and refuses to say
whether it is to wink or frown
but still, it watches me. Long-
ago low-tide whispers shared
between me and the sea, too,
were witnessed by the moon
who saw the sea lapping at my chest,
who saw her rising up with every tear
asked of me. The sea coaxed me

with stories of her people: the hurricane
who’d stolen a mortal songbird’s windpipes, the snow
who’d snatched a ballerina’s grace––but she,
the sea would never do those things,
you see? You’re safe with me. Why
don’t you cry some more? Help me
rise so I can kiss you. Even when

I washed away, when I could
remember drowning in her arms, my mouth
begged for more and for the high moon to dim, me—

The fog is the first to visit. The moon folds
itself into a smile¬––She, a traveling cloud descends
upon my garden to unload her ephemeral water-
flavoured cotton candy bags and settle
in for the night. She, unfettered, can
paint away the late summer hydrangeas,
and in a fit of her own green impulse strip
them of their periwinkle blush to cover
the world in her disembodied white.
She, composed, would sacrifice the
clearest of her water and drape even a
lowly dandelion in diamonds of her making.
And she, the fog, would only ask, lend me your
breath. Let it be. Let us be one, now, tonight.

The sea would never give; the fog would
never take for very long. The true moon waits
and I let it.

Amélie Robitaille is a French Canadian who thinks ADHD is her superpower. She is Publisher of the Savant-Garde Lit Mag, and her work has appeared in Crow & Cross Keys, Dwelling Literary, CP Quarterly, and more. She loves cooking, great puns, and cooking up a great pun.