Bedtime Story: the girl and the quarter moon
Preface
I grew up on folk tales, not fairy tales at bedtime.
a whole different set of stories and ways
to tell them. different expectations. different lessons (I learned).
my bedtime stories spoke of women finding ways not to be sacrificed.
what I learned was
people will leave you on the cliffside to wait for a monster
who is coming to devour you—for their own peace
what I learned was
people will think some things are too big to fight and
the way to get by in their shadow is to let women die to sate it
what I learned was
most of the time, you save yourself.
you find a way to be clever or fast or loving enough
to stop the monstrous cycle right before
its jaws close around you. what I learned was
not to expect to be saved but to know
that if I was good enough at the right, constantly-changing things,
I could save myself, most times.
this carries through.
still doing it. just learning now how to
maybe stop playing this story out.
I am tired of having
to find the right way to be good enough
to be allowed to survive. to claw out my own place
with the paw I struck from the monster
you left me out to feed. tired of the blood
running down my body, from my body,
leaving my body, leaving my body curled and confined
in the softest things I have, but still, the nest I make for myself
feels some days more like I have padded the trap
I was set in as bait. lined the metal teeth with batting.
they’ll still bruise, you know, through that. can still break
an unsettled bone. some days it feels like there is no way
I leave the trap and it doesn’t spring.
Chapter 1
a quarter moon is a half moon, there
are two ways of thinking about it. a full moon
could be called a half moon, on the logic of
a quarter moon – halfway through the cycle.
there is no half moon, officially.
whatever that means. which officials.
sounds like there are two half moons to me.
Chapter 2
I see half of the face that faces me.
we call it quarter because of the cycle,
the whole cycle of new moon to new moon,
and this half-face marks the one-quarter point.
but
reading up on quarter moons, looking at diagrams
of moon cycles, her face emerges in a new way, and the
quarter I see is the quarter of the whole spherical moon, she round
in every dimension. that far dark. calling her half-lit face quarter
an answer, maybe, to the half we never see. this is what
persuades me to quarter moon over half moon. all we can ever have
is half the moon. and quarter moon reminds us that half the time,
all we see is just half of that.
Chapter 3
autism gave me words for things I was already doing: like masking.
it applies elsewhere too, though, has shown up so many places in my life full
of nooks, full of places someone else wants to forget. this is when,
masking is when, you feel safer hiding who and how you be
because the society you live in has convinced you
(often accurately – this part stings the most)
that if you do not hide you, Bad Things will happen. to you.
around you. because of you. and your not-hiding. it says
do not show your autism. your adhd. your POTS, EDS, the other three,
or what ill looks like in your body.
do not show the way joy needs to fizzle out every finger when you get overwhelmed with it.
do not show how some sounds, like the sound of the scrape of that knife on the ceramic
plate, sizzle through your brain, pain searing and shaking you from the inside,
literal pain, do not show it. do not show how hard it is to walk
during a POTS episode, how hard it is to walk with long Covid,
how hard it is to walk with two feet injured from your connective tissue disorder.
do not need a wheelchair. do not look how you look when you need
a wheelchair and don’t have one. do not look how you look when you need.
do not let the expression drop fast from your face when you run out
of the energy that holds it on. do not hold an expression (out of habit)
past when you feel it. but do learn to fake the expressions that make other people feel
comfortable. like the ones that make them feel like you’re listening
because it’s how they listen, but keeping up the Listen face takes all your focus
and you don’t hear a word. learn to hold these faces all day: at school, at work, around strangers, around people who insist that you’re friends. do not let these expressions drop.
no matter what you miss. do not let them drop.
Chapter 4
before I learned what masking was and what I really sounded like inside,
with the filter of everyone else scrubbed off and my flesh close to bloody from it,
before then I only ever showed a quarter moon. it was all I felt allowed.
Chapter 5
there are two quarter moons: first and third. quarters.
one is easy to see, it’s an evening rise, visible around sunset.
the other, third quarter moon, is up when we are, most of us,
asleep. the full moon is so bright with sun that the details
get lost in the glare. this tenth-bright half-face quarter
is where you see the relief of craters. I am told even binoculars
will get you there. and see, when it is just the first quarter moon
you see, that sunset staple, you will only know the ridges
on a single side, one half of the moon. [interjection – one quarter.
still half her face is always back, back away, you will only see half a half.
it’s simple math. you may never see the other craters. and
that can be okay. but you may never know that’s all you have.
and not knowing is a different story.][whispered: you did not
realize I was missing so many essential somethings.]
Chapter 6
one eye cannot see the other. on a human face, on a moon face.
I didn’t know I was missing the other half, the other half a half,
either. it’s these past few years that have retaught me myself,
the selves I found and then lost as a child, a tween, a teen,
a twenty-something. even in private, I did not have me, not—
not even close to the way it is now. this gift of my own fullness,
access to a more actual me, one of the many strange presents
illness has left at my door so far. I am glad I chose to unwrap.
Chapter 7
but where did I really learn to hide?
who taught me the world wasn’t safe for me?
an inventory of me in the context of this country provides a case for hiding:
my tribes survived based on how well they became invisible to white eyes
the statistics for women receiving violence remain shocking
a recent trip to australia drove this home:
I noticed myself telling men when they were doing wrong
and yelling at them when politeness didn’t work
and for once, didn’t fear for my safety. a miracle.
on returning home, I told a female friend about it.
she said it sounded like an alternate universe.
the time, less than five years ago, I had to hide in the basement of my house
while my drunk, violent neighbor hurled homophobic slurs at the front door.
last fall, when I felt a new foot injury burn into life, but was walking home alone, late,
and remembered what they tell young gazelles: they pick off the weak
and the sickly. do not look sickly. do not limp. you have to look strong
enough to fight them off so they don’t try. and how much worse
the pain was when I got home / from bearing all that weight.
I’m not ready to tell strangers the inventories for being
autistic
ace
both chronically and intergenerationally poor
I’m not ready to talk about the intersections
but another strange gift of illness: all this extra time I spend at home
is time I’m not being harassed.
Chapter 8
I don’t fault myself for hiding. I celebrate learning to come out anyway. I would like to get to make only that decision, to feel safe enough to always choose it. here is my request: consider—have you taught me to hide? you. every you. it can be smaller than you think. smaller than you think you can see. but I promise you can learn. wake up for the sunrise to see that other half moon, that other quarter, in detail. you will notice the craters. no microscope. no telescope. they are so visible when you look the right way. I have already shown you so many, close up. like this.
Chapter 9
my love is one of the first to really see the back,
the proverbial dark side of the moon, the half
that gets forgotten when you call a quarter moon
a half moon. she said she wanted to see
whatever was there. I finally believed that what was there
was worth loving, could be shown to the right people.
and she was willing to walk around, to the side
you can’t see from here, and I want to convey
how sincere this is and how much that mattered. to someone who has been taught you hide whole selves to survive or be loved. it was old and it was recent. and she said “I want it all” and I said “I wouldn’t want anyone who wouldn’t” and these are why it’s different this time.
Chapter 10
all the years of hiding and pushing through, saving yourself and finding the ways to be good enough not to be killed, living by the merit du jour,
these will run you into the ground.
my bedtime stories would always end before the heroines could get the chronic illnesses we get when we overclock ourselves to survive. illnesses we then have to hide.
the phases are a cycle. new moon to new moon. have you ever seen the whole face?
Arianne True (Choctaw, Chickasaw) is a disabled queer poet and teaching artist from Seattle, and has spent most of her work time working with youth. She’s received fellowships and residencies from Jack Straw, Artist Trust, and the Seattle Repertory Theater, among others, and is a proud alum of Hedgebrook and of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She lives in Tacoma with her cat, wife, and dog, and is always questing for high-quality dairy-free baked goods. Arianne is the 2023-2025 Washington State Poet Laureate. You can find more at ariannetrue.com.
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