There’s a new moon coming, and she’s terrified of its light. She wants to stay in the shadows, the warmth of the night. It’s soft and calming, tired yet endearing. Its lethargic sways, steady and lopsided, waltz with her endlessly, and she would dream of a thousand things with which she never dared to take flight.

She would just stay right where she is. She knows of the glories that await in the light, the future. She knows of what is there; she knows it all.

She knows that it’s inevitable, too. And, she knows the luminous shade will show her new forests, take her hand, and run her through the weeded grasses. She knows it will swim her through the deep oceans steadily and that she need not worry about the darker depths of next year’s light.

For now, it’s just this one. She knows that, for these brief twelve months, she will meet with sun-kissed flowers and friendly butterflies.

Yet, she wants nothing more than to bask in the pleasant ease of the dark, the shadows, the edge before the light, the unknown.

It could be everything: the painful sun, the blistering peace, the excruciating hard-earned afternoon bliss, the horrible, awful, bright, brilliant, spectacular, stunningly inspiring, beautifully evoking, utterly in peace and effervescence and profound newness and awe. She wants nothing more than to stay on the edge, just before all of that.

It isn’t that she doesn’t want what is there; she knows of all this, she knows still more awaits. Yet, there is something about the sweet calm of the stagnant night, its noncommittal elegance. The passive indecision of this very moment is so pleasantly sweet, and she doesn’t want it to become a mere aftertaste to be diluted with the forgetfulness of time passing.

She would keep the present tucked in her palm, warm it with aggressive stubbornness and never let it go. The moment would wither and die in her hand, and she would cling to it anyway, its poor body limp and depleted.

And still, she wishes to hang to this and not step eagerly into the moon’s graceful shine. The coming of the glow is approaching, and she can’t look away from the growing future, so she holds onto the quiet night for as long as she can.

She stays in the shadows, the warmth of the night. It’s soft and calming, and she passes another of the few remaining nights before the new moon’s shining light.