Moon & Sun

Dylan had lost the ability to cry for herself a long time ago. When she summoned tears for her pain, they wouldn’t come. So she learnt how to let things out through other methods. 

She wrote, she danced, she sang, she took pictures and doodled ugly drawings in stranded pieces of paper. She listened to other people’s words, other people’s problems. Dylan was the Moon and the Stars. She reflected everyone else’s light, brought it back into focus. And she shone when she was alone. She helped wherever she could. And she forgot she was important: everyone else was first. 

Dylan felt other people’s feelings. She felt everything so strongly. She felt the wing rushing under Icarus’ wings. She felt the thrill, and the excitement. And she felt the heat of the Sun, and the panic and the fall. Sometimes, emotions were simply too much, they were painful. She relished the tightness in her chest, though; it told her she was alive. 

But, sadly, it was only through other people’s pains and sorrows that she could summon tears to her eyes. She was only a reflection of light after all. And so she watched dramas on TV and romantic or sad movies and let herself feel everything the characters felt. And she fought against all her instincts that told her to stop the droplets that fell down her cheeks. 

Her own tears had dried out around the time she was 15. That’s when she simply gave up on herself. Her pain was always there, a constant reminder in her knees and her ankles, mild daily headaches, banging resonating aches in her chest. She was alive, she felt everything, and some days she wished she didn’t. 

Dylan had an older sister. Her name was Noah and she was the Sun, the light of their family. Noah simply shone brighter than anyone else. But she didn’t realize her own light obscured others. 

On the other hand, young Dylan was the Moon and the Stars. She shone in her own quiet way, and only when Noah was not around. She had learnt to be silent, to take up as little space as possible. Because Noah was big, and bright, and loud. And there was no place for Dylan in her presence. 

And in all her loudness, the Sun never realized her counterpart was getting smaller and smaller, slowly fading into silenced cries. 

Age was always a question mark in Dylan’s life. She had never been the age she was. When she was five she knew more than other 5-year-olds. When she was 8, she read adult novels and understood, she guessed the meaning behind adult faces and she shed silent tears of loss. On the way home, in that last road trip between worlds, she watched as her innocence dissolved into lumps of hay and the smell of pigs going to slaughter. 

When Dylan turned 11, she was already 18. She trailed behind her mother, watching her chores, and learnt that ammonia and bleach can kill you if you mix them. She went to her training, got good grades and read books no one cared about. She swept and mopped the floors of their apartment on Saturdays and screamed at Noah because she never did her chores. But then voices would descend upon her: Noah had to study; chores were not her responsibility anymore. When Dylan turned 11, she cried again. The unshed tears that she had held in for the past 3 years responded to her call as she said goodbye to the woman who had raised her and looked at her in awe. the howling wolf who had cherished her silent brightness. And she cried for the loss of a third parent. 

At 14, she wasn’t 14, and her body seemed to know. At 14 she had been bleeding for a year, and her bones gave up on her. So she lost a piece of herself and buried it deep underwater. She was slowly crumbling under the light. And Silence had swallowed her, but no one realized in time. 

At 16, she could have been 23. She felt the weight of the world on her shoulders and she almost gave up. The Sun was gone. Noah had left. And Dylan could not fill the void anymore. 

Dylan turned 18 alone. She was out of orbit, losing her soft quiet brightness. Noah came and went; she flared up and left exhaustion and destruction behind her. But it was never her fault; it was Dylan’s lack of brightness. 

Dylan couldn’t take it much longer. Her light was slowly fading into silence. And she was too far gone by the time they realized. The Moon had extinguished herself into the black night.