Running barefoot through the grass that tickly-bites at your knees. I laugh and you fall and each scraped knee is easier to bear, dirty battle scars formed across my shins from years of practice.
They shine in the grass like little moons, under trees and park benches. Little moons swimming in a sea of grass and spider-stars. Your fingers showed me how to make better shadow puppets and how to catch a falling leaf and later, how to love. Your fingers can reach out and pluck the little shining moon from the sky.
They are the reflection of the sun and they will glint when you flash them, like a pair of grey-blue eyes I met a long time ago. The edges speak as they clatter into our pockets.
The years when the shop down the road used to sell lollies for a penny a bag.
The year we moved into the new (old) house.
The year Phar Lap won the cup.
The year when your baby sister slid out of your mother on a night with no stars, and you and I saw the whole thing. You and I watched something so small salute the little moon silver in the sky.
"Lonely without any stars," you said.
"But this one, she’s a star for sure," your dad said. And he kissed the still-wet baby on the top of her tiny head, and I swear that something in the air was singing.
Little moons carried in a pocket, clinky-jingling against one another. You can swap eight of them (a haphazard arrangement of sizes) for a bottle of milk at the corner shop. Glinting under fluorescent lights and crashing into a till. Fifty, twenty, ten, five. The year Lyons was elected. The year the war started. The year (too many years later) that the last soldier put down his gun and that was that.
One moon flying through the sky and the other swimming through the fishpond in your garden. You held my hand and there were little calluses on your hands from years of hessian and dirt. I sat there, in my homemade cotton dress, and memorised every one of them.
One moon flying through the sky and the other reflected in the dark of your eyes. I saw it in the half-light, sitting under the apple tree. Your eyes were full of moon and they danced, they laughed. Something in the air was singing, on that night of two moons. And I think something inside of me was singing along quietly, just waiting for my time to shine as brightly as you.
One moon flying through the sky, the other locked away in the little boxes of my memories. These days, all I know is that there's a little moon dancing through my mind whenever I think of you.