Just the Moon

Standing in my back yard, bare armed in the clothes I wore to that night's party. There's a camera slung over my shoulder by some fake-leather strap and I'm using it to take pictures of the moon. They aren't good pictures by any measure, but they capture the moment. They prove to me and to anybody else that it happened and that I was there when it did.
Staring into the sky at a white ball the size of a dime I feel nothing, but it's the absence of feeling that makes me feel. By staring at this rock suspended in space I felt the presence of everyone and everything that's come before me. "We have this in common, no matter what, this is something we have in common." I breathe in a deep lung of cold pacific air and wait.

I was told the moon might change tonight, that tonight was one of few when it could trade in its indifferent ivory and become vermilion with passion. Tonight was the moon's chance to sever the connection that tethers me to the million young buried at my feet. Tonight I could lift my feet off the ground and fly, free of history, if only for a few minutes.
As the hands on my watched pass the time I was given and the sound of the inconstant stream of a sprinkler breaks the air, I know she's reconsidered. And as I replace the lens on my camera and creep through wet grass to my back door, our connection is stronger than ever and I'm glad.