Savannah Lee

So okay. I put my slippers on, threw my coat over my robe and ventured out the front door.

It was about twenty after nine at night. The lights made all the ice glow against the black. The snow, watercolor-darkened, still sparkled in the artificial suns.

Was that what he'd brought me out to see? The winter night?

He turned me around and pointed me up, through the blackened branches of the highest tree.

The moon was turning red.

My father and I saw a red moon once. Years ago. We were driving home from somewhere and pulled into a parking lot to get out of the car and look at it. I was young; I remember singing to it, and feeling like I would somehow understand it better if I were a deer.

He'd called me this afternoon. Funny.

My husband said "It's a lunar eclipse. And there's going to be a full solar in August."

"Really!"

"Yeah."

His face was spanking-red with cold. We were on our way down to -15. I said, "You gonna stay out here?"

He laughed and shook his head.

My father's red moon had been warm.

"Let's go," my husband said, and we crunched our way back up the driveway and down the walk, brushing the ice-fingers of the bushes and trees. They made a 'crinkle' sound, the music of a crippled bell.

The silence of the cold became an echo.