A dalliance with the moon

a backpack.

Funny how she no longer recognized herself in the mirror. Seventeen years of age and she felt more distanced from herself than she ever had in the years before. She knew the eyes staring back at her, but the rest of her felt alienated. Her breaths quickened and shortened. But she could not look away. It was as if her eyes were holding someone else's. Staring so intensely she wanted to crawl into the corner of her dust-collecting room and cover herself with blankets.

"Who are you?", she questioned. Her lips moved slowly. As if to articulate every letter in the strange sentence.

Seventeen year old Freya shrugged her shoulders and mouthed 'I don't know'. She knew the chestnut brown hair and how long it took to comb the knots out of her soft curls. The way her skin would make her feel uncomfortable in all its imperfection. How her arms sluggishly hung by her sides, never sure what to do with them.

She forced a smile at her reflection and studied the tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. They slowly started to slide down her puffy cheeks and she let them. What was the use in wiping them away if there were only more to come?

"You'd know what to do, wouldn't you, mom?", she whispered. Of course she would. She'd always had to answer to everything.

She cursed herself for being a dreamer, for never seeing reality through clean glasses, but through her hazy, blurred and cloudy vision instead.

"My cosmic dreamer," her dad would say as he pulled her into his chest. She'd feel safe in the musty smell of his sweater, as if he'd only just found it somewhere at the back of his wardrobe. But if she was a cosmic dreamer, why could she not breathe her mother back alive? The universe had a firm grip on her, twisting the pathways she'd tread so carefully. Life seemed to have a funny way of working out for her. Not all surprises were welcome, but they showed up on her doorstep nevertheless.

She pulled herself away from the mirror, reverting back into the Freya she knew. Her nightgown slipped down her shoulder and she carefully stepped out of it as it fell to the floor. She still knew how to dress herself, but the clothes felt heavy and strangling. Her jeans were too tight around her legs, though they hung loosely. The knitted sweater pulled her down almost, pressing against her chest and restricting her already shallow breathing.

The backpack on her unmade bed was tempting her. But she couldn't, could she? The guilt would eat her alive if she left. Only one week after the unbearable pain, could she truly leave her father behind and venture all alone? It was packed with all the necessary equipment, everything she could ever need and more. Her pencils and notebooks barely fit in the overloaded bag, but she had to pack them up too. The pages would listen to her when she'd have no one to talk to.

Would he understand? As he sat with his hands in his hair at the dinner table in their messy living room? Even her plasters were still sticking to the floor. He would pick them up, absent-mindedly, as if they were the only thing he had left of her. Or she had left for him.

She painted the image of her broken father before her eyes, knowing he was downstairs, waiting. But never for her, even the well-loved cosmic dreamer was lightyears away from reaching him. They lived on opposite sides of the moon. Both shadow-kissed and seeking a place to rest in the shadows where the sun couldn't reach their eyes.

Much like the surface of the moon their life had been black and white with grey, undefined moments here and there. They were randomly divided over their lives. But one doesn't choose when to feel what. Some days or hours they had felt love so deeply it blinded them to the future. Other days they had cried for hours, each of them sat in their own candle lit room. On the grey days life went on, dragging them behind without a will of their own.