Waning Crescent

by M. Frost

The moon’s phase on the day I was born:
the shredded silver of it dominated by shadow,
and like me, destined for distant conclusion.

What followed was the new moon, dark
tubing tracing the crescent of my skull,
bound by its sleeve to the night’s interior,
not filled with light, but banished from it.

They taught me later how the constellation
of the lion had hung in the sky, that it raged
and did not set, that it could consume even
the spaces between the stars. I could not see it

then as I do now, as a beast ebbing, over millennia,
its death throes slow as light. Closer now, I stand
beneath that star I cannot outlive. I am its fate,
reflected upon the diminishing orb of my own mind.

It comforts me, to know that I too shall end,
despite my heat, despite the way I warm the night,
despite the small piece of myself that hangs in the sky.

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