I remember a story my mother told me once. It was a story about our father, a man who hid up there on the moon. He was sad, alone, full of regret. His children had forgotten about him and he had to abandon them to live up in the heavens.
“He’s sat up there now,” My mom would say, “Horrified by all the blood we spill each day,”
The man in the moon watches you, whether you believe it or not. My dad can attest to that. You see, he fell straight from the sky one day. My father touched the stars on his way down. He gazed into the man’s silver eyes. The Man in the Moon was tired. His face was wrinkled and shadowed. At the time, my dad winced at the sight. My mum tells that story any time she can, with hope in her own eyes. I think she believes it will get people to listen. To look up at the sky again. Maybe blink at the Moon.
Or everyone’s right. She’s just after attention. She just does it to get people talking. There’s no such thing as a man living on the moon. There’s no such thing as goblins or vampires or werewolves prowling our field. I don’t know. Her ideas are so ridiculous that I’m almost inclined to agree with them. Almost. See, if my mom’s just crazy and all of her stories are the product of an overactive imagination, care to explain how my father’s alive, sleeping soundly, upside down in our attic rafters?