She is a moon

She Is a Moon

They said she was quiet.

Too quiet, perhaps. A girl who never shouted, who rarely laughed too loud, who sat by windows as if the stars whispered to her. But no one asked why. No one wondered what storms brewed behind her stillness. They just called her distant — like the moon.

But if they’d looked closer, they would have seen her glow.

Her name was Lira. She wasn’t made for the daylight — not in the way others were. The sunlit world felt too harsh, too demanding. People spoke fast, laughed faster, and judged without pause. Lira moved through it all like a shadow, graceful but unseen, present but apart. Teachers marked her present. Classmates forgot her name.

But at night, she came alive.

She wandered through fields behind her house when the world fell quiet. The cold wind didn’t bother her; it felt honest. Her bare feet kissed the earth, and her eyes rose to the heavens. That’s when she felt it — the pull. The gentle tug of something ancient and silent. The moon watched her the way no one else did.

She told her secrets to that pale, glowing witness.

“I’m tired of pretending,” she’d whisper.

“I’m not like them.”

“I wish someone saw me.”

The moon never answered. But it never turned away either. Lira imagined it understood.

Over time, the moon became more than a companion. It became a mirror. On the nights it was full, she felt powerful, charged with energy no one else could see. On the nights it vanished, so did she. Some days she walked through school like a wraith, half-there, eyes hollow, spirit dimmed. And yet no one asked.

One night, when the sky was clear and silver bathed the earth, she met him.

His name was Kai, and he saw her.

Not by accident — not in passing — but really saw her. He found her sitting on the old stone wall near the woods, legs swinging, head tilted toward the stars.

“You come out here a lot,” he said.

She blinked, surprised. “You’ve been watching me?”

“No. Not like that. I just... noticed. You’re always alone.”

“I like alone.”

He smiled. “I like the moon.”

That was how it started. A strange friendship, carved out of silence and moonlight. He didn’t talk too much, and he didn’t demand she fill the empty spaces. Sometimes they sat without a single word. Other times, he’d tell her things — about his brother, his anger, the way he sometimes wanted to run away from it all.

She listened. Like the moon.

Eventually, she spoke too. Not much, but enough.

She told him that people overwhelmed her. That crowds made her feel like she was disappearing. That sometimes, the only time she felt real was when the rest of the world was asleep.

He nodded. He didn’t call her strange. He didn’t try to fix her.

He just said, “You’re like the moon.”

Her breath caught. “Why?”

“Because you don’t need to burn to be bright.”

And that was when she knew — someone saw her light.

Seasons passed. They grew close. Her smiles came easier, like crescent moons at first, thin and shy, but growing fuller with each passing week. She didn’t try to be loud. She didn’t try to change. And for the first time, she didn’t want to.

But life isn’t always soft with quiet girls.

Kai moved away in the spring. His father got a job across the country. On their last night together, they met under their moon.

Neither cried. Not then.

He gave her a small silver charm — a moon on a thin chain. “To remind you,” he said, “you don’t fade just because someone isn’t looking.”

And then he was gone.

For a while, the darkness came back. Deeper than before. Lonelier. But something inside her was different now. She had seen herself through someone else’s eyes — and found light there.

She started writing. Poems. Letters to the moon. Secrets she no longer wanted to bury. She wrote not to be heard, but to release the ache inside. And little by little, people started noticing. Teachers praised her words. A classmate called her work “hauntingly beautiful.” A local magazine published her poem titled “She Is a Moon.”

It wasn’t fame. It wasn’t loud.

But it was light.

Years later, Lira stood on a stage, reading her words to a quiet room full of eyes that didn’t look past her anymore. She wasn’t trying to be the sun. She was never made for that.

But in the quiet, she glowed.