The Day-Moon

There was a day-moon on the winter morning that the young woman’s heart was broken. Perhaps she wouldn’t have noticed it if she’d accepted his offer of a lift home, but as it was she’d walked along the coastal path, her body and heart still trembling from what he’d said an hour ago. Over the table in the café he’d spoken five words that eclipsed all she had come to know. ‘I don’t love you anymore.’ That was all. Five words. She’d heard each individually at first and taken a moment to piece them together, ‘don’t’ and ‘love’ as clear as the halo moon above her now.

Sitting at a wooden bench overlooking the sea, she crossed her arms and tucked her hands into her jacket pockets, the icy breeze harsh against her face. But though she was numb from the cold, she couldn’t bear to go back to the flat because within the four walls of every room were reminders of happier times: smiling faces would look out at her from photographs on the fridge, his neat handwriting would be on the Post-It pad by the telephone, his books on his side of the unmade bed, his cologne in the bathroom cabinet. She would have to box all this up at some point, she knew that, but right now the thought of doing so lent his leaving a permanence she didn’t dare consider. They’d only taken a break of two weeks, but in that time he’d decided that their love was over. And she’d missed him more than she’d ever thought possible.

‘Cold out, isn’t it?’

Startled by a voice beside her, the young woman turned to see an elderly lady lower herself onto the bench. In a heavy looking duffel coat, she leant back in the seat, stretched out her legs and sighed as if slipping into a warm bath.

‘The doctor says I shouldn’t be out in this weather, really,’ she said in a voice as scratchy as old vinyl. ‘My circulation’s not what it used to be. But I said to him, ‘’I’ve got to go out,’’ I said. ‘’Can’t keep myself cooped up all day.’’ Besides, what’d happen to Bernie here?’ She nodded down to a shivering Jack Russell that the young woman hadn’t noticed until now. ‘A dog don’t understand bad circulation. If he wants to go for a walk, you got to take him for a walk.’ She tutted as if talking to the doctor. ‘Can’t let something like the cold stop you doing what you want, can you?’

‘No,’ said the young woman. ‘I suppose not.’

They sat, then, in silence, these women of different generations both looking out at the sea that rolled back and forth, back and forth.

The young woman wondered for a moment if she should go home now that her solitude had been interrupted, but no sooner had the thought entered her mind than she asked herself what the point would be. Though it was true that she was no longer alone here, at least it was only her flesh that was cold. At home it would be her heart and soul that would be chilled by the reality that he no longer lived with her, that he was nothing more than a ghost in the flat, made up of memories. And so, to make conversation, she said in a quiet voice, ‘A moon in the daytime doesn’t seem quite right, does it?’

The old woman shook her head and pursed her near-blue lips. ‘But we can’t have the summer if we don’t have the winter. I remember when I was a little girl I used to think that winter would never end. It seemed like I was waking up in the dark and coming home in the dark, never seeing any sunlight at all. I couldn’t wait to get out and play again. And then I thought the same when the summer came. I couldn’t even imagine a day that I’d have to wear more than a cotton dress. But, course, the seasons change, don’t they? Nothing lasts forever.’ She adjusted the headscarf she was wearing and looked at the young woman as if for the first time. ‘Do you mind me talking to you?’ she asked. ‘It’s just I don’t see no one all day and I’ve got to talk to someone else I worry I’ll never speak again. My throat goes all dry, see.’

‘I don’t mind,’ the young woman said, and in an instant heard his voice again: I don’t love you anymore. Each heavy word carried a bruise if its own and she wondered, If nothing lasts forever, would this pain in her heart cease at some point? And if so, when? In the fresh green of spring? The sticky heat of summer? The dull gold of autumn? The thought of still feeling this way in a year’s time filled her with a bone-aching dread and she decided that a heartache in winter must be the cruellest of them all.

‘Course, what we forget,’ the old woman beside her said, clearing her throat, ‘is that it takes time. The seasons, I mean. We don’t wake up one day and it’s summer outside, do we? First the mornings get lighter, then it starts getting warmer, then the evenings get longer. It doesn’t happen overnight.’

‘When do you think it will get warmer?’ she asked.

‘Like I said, it’ll take time. Can’t rush it, can we? Give it a few months, we’ll soon feel the difference.’

Nodding in agreement, the young woman stared ahead at the pearly day-moon and imagined the seasons changing before her. It would be weeks, months even, before she’d see any change. But change would come, wouldn’t it? It was inevitable. That was nature, after all. And if it happened around her, wouldn’t it happen within her, too?

After the old woman and the dog left, the young woman stayed at the bench and watched as the day-moon became the night-moon and the stars pierced the dark sky with light. Change was already in the air.