It’s late and chilly. My one-year-old nudges my thigh and points out the screen door. We’re just letting the dog out, but my daughter’s got a hunger for playing outside. Hearing a whisper nudge that seems to say, “Why not?” I slide out of the way holding her tiny hand as she has more bravery than balance for steps. With a Lego block in one hand and a kazoo shaped like red lips in the other, she sit-shuffles down the three cracked-paint steps. Our dog stands on point at the edge of the grass, somehow stopped by the cement barrier, and my pajama feet girl skip-runs up and down the sidewalk dotted with whirly-gig seeds from the Maple tree. Dusk settles over the windless leaves, and I step my socked feet down to sit on the second to last step smiling at the whirring kazoo dotted by giggles. Breath slows, confident that the two are playing safely past the danger of the steps, so I look up and to the left to the bright white circle set in contrast to the deep purple-blue of the sky framed in a perfect arch by the leaved branch. And I think, I might have missed this moon.
Evi Wusk 
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