When the Moon Was Ours

by Anna-Marie McLemore

How there was no letting go of Samira, because now she felt like a friend he had imagined to fill the empty space before Miel. But he could not be her. There was still a part of him, spinning and wondering, that wanted to know how long his mother’s calm and patience would stand, how long until it fell or crumbled beneath everything he was. Would it hold if, one day, he drew closer to the faith of her father’s family, or her mother’s, both these faiths she’d rejected because she was so sure God was bigger than religion? Would it stay if, one day, he left this town to hang moons every place on earth there were trees, or if he never lived anywhere but this place his mother had given him? Would it stand no matter what he became or did not become? But for right now, that one sentence—What if I wanted to stay this way?—was all he had in him. He’d used up all his words.