Moon Halo

Last night

my daughter woke me—

not only because the moon was rare,

but because she understood

I had forgotten how to look up.

She said, Come see,

the way children do,

because they know

beauty is in more than the eye of the beholder.

A ring around the moon—

light bent into a promise.

I took a picture.

Posted it.

Celeste said it meant luck.

Science says

it’s only ice—

high-altitude crystals

fracturing moonlight

into a perfect circle.

Spirit says the halo signals an ending,

a change arriving

not as punishment

but as guidance—

a protected path forward,

a reminder

to trust what you know

before someone teaches you not to.

I used to trust my intuition

more than my own breath.

Then he taught me doubt.

Maybe he was right.

Maybe I was too much.

Maybe I was seeing things that weren’t there.

Maybe I didn’t understand the words he spoke.

When my heart screamed danger,

I told it to be quiet.

When he turned me into a joke—

a line delivered for laughter—

I learned how truth hides

behind public smiles

and private I love yous.

Something in me died.

I practiced looking alive.

I became

a moving body

with no pulse inside.

The moon last night

asked me for nothing

but offered absolute clarity.

This morning

my light bent differently—

no longer angled

toward his shadow inside me.

His phase is over.

I deleted photos—

us laughing before I knew he could laugh at me,

sunset pictures where his hand held mine,

tricking me into thinking it meant safety.

Deleted the messages too—

the ones where he spoke cruelly

about his friends.

I had kept them

like insurance,

in case I ever needed

to remind him who he is.

But enlightenment doesn’t blackmail.

So I let those go as well.

Bagged the clothes of his

I had worn home

like borrowed skin.

Threw away the plastic shark from an early date,

the heart-shaped rock with our names from Avila Beach—

souvenirs from moments

I thought were permanent.

Before ripping it, I laughed at the birthday card

sent after our ending—

beautiful flowers for a beautiful woman—

because while we were together

beauty belonged to others

and I was only “cute,”

a word meant to soften exclusion.

I almost kept these things

to honor who we were—

until I realized

they only honored

who I hoped we would be.

The man I loved

never existed.

The man I romanticized

was a lesson,

not a loss.

There’s still a trace of anger,

a shadow waiting to eclipse

into understanding.

But understanding,

no matter how late,

is its own illumination.