The Moonlight Was a Glitch

Moonlight softened
the bathroom counter yellow,
and bathed the shampoo streaks
that sprang to sight like mushrooms
in dank and spongy soil.
Caressed the toothbrush like wild night fern
the creams and ointments, each separate genus
given life by this unexpected glitch
of half-completed neon light.

Not the flat casket glare
that cast its dead look longing
over the toilet top,
along the shower curtain rod,
blunt creeping into all of it,
but something about a ballast and a circuit,
her understanding dimmed like the light itself,
it halted its process, yielding
something gentler,
perhaps, with hope, it always lay within,
night’s soft shade of kindliness
that must love you for it makes you beautiful.

When she knew what she had
she turned sideways and saw her dreamtime face
and a smile that spoke of wisdom.
Then CLICK the light blustered full
and in its shine, her face,
scrubbed of reminiscence,
much as she always saw it.

Published in Fall 2010, Volume 4.2 of Straylight Literary Arts Magazine, the literary magazine of the University of Wisconsin–Parkside.