where the Sun goes at night

I visit the Sun by ways only the Moon understands. She watches me tip toe through the grass and climb down to the shore where the rocks are cold and the sand is colder. 

“I warned you.” The Moon’s words swirl down from the sky, landing on my chest and weighing on my heart. 

I shiver under her cool gaze and clutch my jar of captured sunlight, his heat pressing against the skin of my hand. Nearly burning. A kindling to my body. The chill inside me aches to feel warm again, though the Moon’s caution makes me hesitate. There is no harm in chasing the Sun, I justify, as I twist off the lid and drink his radiance. 

I travel to where the Sun goes at night, and I return in the morning with the same chill in my body, filled with the absence of him. 

The Sun. My Sun, I think, as I bask under his embrace. Sometimes I try to hold my Sun when it’s his time to set, as if holding the light in my hands will hold him in the sky for a moment longer, but he slips through my fingers like dripping honey. My Sun. So bright, so warm, and always fleeting. 

Stay, I whisper. I’ll be back, he promises. But the nights become longer and his intensity dissipates as it always does, as I always dread. I plead again for him to stay. Come with me, he says, endlessly. His words weigh on my heart. My jar full to the brim. So I sit with the Moon and confess my longing for the one I cannot be with. 

“You are living by way of someone else’s light. Follow him and you will soon fail to recognize your own shadow.” 

Her moonlight casts down on me and I force myself to endure the chill that aches my body. The jar in my hand then feels too hot. The glow too brilliant. So I twist off the lid and give back his light, hoping he will understand. I watch him pour his heart into the sky and I plant my feet in the earth, telling myself to stay.