“It enclosed us in its laceries as we watched the moon spill across the Atlantic like wine from an overturned glass. With the light all around us, we felt secret in that moon-infused water like pearls forming in the soft tissues of oysters.”

“Even the silences seemed infused with a secret knowledge. We held hands as we walked around the moon and it felt right and it felt good. I had never felt anything like that before.”

“But then the wine came, one glass and then a second glass. And somewhere during that second drink, the switch was flipped. The wine gave me a melting feeling, a warm light sensation in my head, and I felt like safety itself had arrived in that glass, poured out from the bottle and allowed to spill out between us.”

“Under the night rug, the star rug, moon as lantern, man in the moon watching over us, dog star at his heels, we lay.”

“The moon likes secrets," Meran said. "And secret things. She lets mysteries bleed into her shadows and leaves us to ask whether they originated from otherworlds, or from our own imaginations.”

“As tiny silver flakes drifted down to settle on our bodies---Both the living and the dead---I thought perhaps the moon had hidden her face from us, as full of sorrow as we were. But she couldn't stop her tears from spilling out in the form of silent snow.”