“I’ve always felt that if I didn’t know what phase the moon was in on any given day, there was something wrong with my life,” she confided.

He gestured up at the sky. “It’s full now.”

“A little past full, actually. See how a little slice is missing on the left-hand edge? That’s a gibbous moon, and it’s waning.”

They sat there on the warm hood of the car for a while, considering the satellite hanging swollen and orange over the autumn treetops. “I’ve heard a lot of names for a moon that looks like that,” he said. “Harvest moon, painted moon. But I always liked what my grandfather called it—a blood moon.”

She hugged her knees against the cold. “Why’d he call it that?”

“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it a lot. It could mean death, I suppose.”

“Or werewolves.”

“Sure. But I think it means—well, what I’d like it to mean is just blood.” He smiled at her. “You know. Life. Passion. Humanity and all that goes with it.”

“Animals have blood, too.”

He laughed, snorting a cloud of steam into the chill night. “I guess they do. But it’s not the same, is it? I mean, do you know of any animals that look up at the sky and wonder about the universe?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“I look up at the moon, and I think of all the other people who’ve looked up at this same moon. All the people who counted the days until it was full again, for generations and thousands of years. All the poetry it’s inspired. All the lovers. All the wars it’s seen. The moon can mean so many different things to other people and other cultures, other times. And yet we barely know it. I guess we’ve taken some rock samples and we’ve studied its surface, even walked on it, but somehow I feel like we’ll never truly know the moon. Not like we know the earth. The moon is our eternal companion, circling us through the ages as we tumble through the void.”

She was silent for a moment. “I think you know the moon better than I do,” she replied, slipping a hand over his arm. He squeezed hers with his own.

Together, they shared a kiss in the blood moonlight.

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.