When the Moon Was Ours

by Anna-Marie McLemore

Miel was a handful of foil stars, but they were the fire that made constellations.

She was a place whose darkness held not fear, but the promise of stars.

a morning so new it was still silver.

Twenty, that number that Miel always thought of as making someone, in some final way, an adult.

the water rippled like the hem of a dress.

You do not own what I grow.

They had spent nights pretending the stars were things that could be lured to earth. That the fairy rings thick with white-capped mushrooms were the light of the moon seared into the ground.

“We don’t get to become who we are for nothing. It costs something.

Fearless charm would never flow from her body like yards of chiffon.

Whenever the weather turned cold, people grabbed at gossip quicker, as though they could spin it like wool, wrap themselves in it.