It’s six A.M. in mid October in my cabin in northwestern Wisconsin. The moon is full and bright and approaching the western horizon. Beyond the reach of its glow, stars shine bright and vivid. In less than a half hour, in the east, the sun will rise. Yesterday, shortly before it rose, it projected its rays onto the descending moon, and turned the moon a bright orange, almost a blood red, that the coyotes outside yipped and howled at.

She is light, lit by the same celestial spark that ignited the stars, and in the infinite darkness of the unending night and the numbing cold of oblivion, I cling to her.