Detective Camembert

 

From a photograph by Kris Reichl

Directing its light into my eyes like a noir detective, the full moon is shining into my top floor apartment, glaring at me, a glowing white wheel, Detective Camembert. Demanding answers. Cold, flinty, remorseless. 

I muster enough resistance to ask what right he has to interrogate me, after all, he revolves around me, not me around him.

He accepts the truth of this, but adds that he will only be revolving around me for a little while longer. He suggests I should, perhaps, respect my elder. My brain struggles to conceive of four and a half billion years, so I ask what he wants to know.

He wants to know what I’ve been doing since he last looked in on me, a month or so ago. He wants to know if I’ve found any conciliation with my place in the universe. He seems to know that such thoughts trouble my mind.

We sit, and stare at each other icily as we drift away from each other so very slowly.

I have no answers for him.

As his light gradually eases from my eyes, I try to imagine what this wise old sleuth has seen, what he knows. I fail to comprehend such a vigil, a freezing vacuum, seeing everything, and all the time hiding his other face from us.

The full moon leaves the interview room silently, without judgement. There is nothing I can tell him.

I’m left staring out into the night, rotating, revolving knowing that next month, the month after, every month until the moon no longer revolves around me, I will still have no answers. 

But I take comfort in knowing the good cop of the morning sun will soon be here. 

And I wonder if the moon is questioning me because he, too, is rotating, revolving, he, too, billions of years from now, will cease rotating and revolving, never knowing why. 

No wiser than me. 

Or you.

Parkstreet

Ko-Fi