The Moon Wakes me

It's 6am and something stirs in me- I don't want to be up so early. That strange in between feeling, sleepy and awake at once, blood moving in my legs as if to carry me somewhere. I can't ignore the moon. She is drawing me in. I put my coat on, and walk to the balcony, and snap a photo- a way to reach for connection, to remember.

Below me, the river carries her light, in a single line, straight toward where I am standing. Not scattered everywhere. Contained within the blueness of the river water.

I wonder what the light actually reaches. Maybe not all of me- just whatever part happened to be facing the window this morning. The tired me. The curious me. And I wonder who was looking before I decided to look- the same self who usually decides things, or someone quieter, older, the one who trusted words as a child, who let them arrive without needing to earn them.

I have always loved to write. When I was younger, I'd fall into a space that felt slow and spacious, and I'd let words flow through me- not just trust that space, but feel met by it, as if something sacred were passing through, tender and wordless, the way connection with nature, or a newborn sometimes is.

We aren't permanent. Neither are words, or our reflections. What is met this morning, won't be met tomorrow- I know that each time I sit down, the same words will come out differently and yet, they convey something similar nevertheless. Same and different. So presence isn't a floodlight, evenly lighting everything I am, all at once. It's this moment meeting this part of me, and dissolving the second I move.

And yet something stays. Not the shape of what is met- that changes every time, like the surface of moving water. What stays is more like the riverbank: not separate from the water, just what lets it keep taking a shape, morning after morning, moon after moon. Perhaps that's what draws me to the moon and the river this morning- Am I, for a brief moment, seeing myself in them: changing and staying the same at once.

I get to meet whoever's here today- engage, come alive, and then let it rest again. Let silence take up space too, the way the river does when nothing's reflecting on it. Not rushing anywhere. Breathing is enough, being here, alive, having life move through this shape for now- that's enough.

The moon wakes me and shines her light. I remember I am here. Here I exist. Here I love. Here I breathe. Here I am.

And You- Where Are You Today?