I can’t feel my hands.

It’s the only thought she can get out, the only thing she can process, the simplest set of words she can string together in the moment. The world is suddenly dark, so dark, and she could swear that just a moment ago there had been more than this, the crushing weight of invisibility pressing her down.

I can’t feel my feet either.

She kicks and struggles and her toes meet hard wood—couldn’t this sort of thing break a bone or twelve with ease? She wouldn’t know. All she knows is that she has to go up, past the wood and the weight and the awful dreadful suspicion that there is nothing else for her broken spirit to feel.

What can I feel?

Any other day, it would be a simple question with a simple answer. But she can’t feel, she can’t see, she can’t know what this is or how deep she is. She scratches, fights, claws her way forward, pulls a deep breath into depleted lungs and forces a response to her own question.

Nothing.

She looks down at her own body, her hands just as unfeeling and lungs just as empty as before. There is no longer the weight of burial dirt and splintering coffin wood to battle, no fear of invisibility or numbness to push her forward.

What am I?

Is she…free? Untethered? Set loose? She doesn’t know. She stands, stares down at the grave before her. The heart she had in life would be beating out of her chest now had it followed her into death. But now she only sighs, a single shallow breath to welcome herself to the afterlife.

A ghost has no use for feelings here.

Harlan woke again at 7:29 AM, one minute ahead of his alarm and being blinded by the light of the sun through the window. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten back to bed, yet there he was anyway, tangled in the blanket like he’d never gotten up at all.

His morning was slow and quiet, something that would be considered peaceful had anyone else been experiencing it. Get up, make a cup of coffee, feed the cat, stare out the window, scribble a few new notes or lyrics down on a page of sheet music—it was the same every day. But he was itching to go somewhere, to do something, to get away from this house as soon as he could.

He knew he should love it. He wanted to love it. It had been his home for years, after all, and the place he first wrote the songs he still played each night during his conversations with the Moon.

And the house, he knew, had no correlation to the songs, and the songs no correlation to the house. The Moon had told him so more times than he could count, and his own logic was obviously faulty. But the fact that the songs remained within the house’s walls made the place torturous to remain in, even if—

They don’t have to remain there, you know, he could practically hear the Moon say. It’s all up to you, Harlan.

“Tell that to Lola then,” Harlan scoffed, then deflected. “You’re not even here, are you? It’s too early for that.”

He nearly smirked when, as expected, there was no response. At the bright, sunny hour of—he checked his watch to see 10:40 AM flash across its screen—not even 11, he’d have to make his own conversation.

And he would make it, he decided. But certainly not on that topic, and those songs wouldn’t be going out anytime soon (that is, not if he had any say in the matter). Finally he picked up a bag with a sigh, gave the cat a pat on the head, and left the house behind for the afternoon.

Maybe he’d get lucky today.

————

Each morning at 1:01 AM, a man speaks to the moon, and each morning, the moon speaks back. Sing of the Moon is a stage play first written in prose, a method designed to flesh out each character and each scene before its translation to the stage.

The more I flesh this project out, the more it seems like it’s shaping up to be a jukebox musical featuring songs by The Collection, which I’m absolutely not upset about. Let’s see how that goes.

He’d gone to bed at 10:30 PM Eastern Standard Time, the sun well on its way to the other side of the Earth. He’d hoped it would give him an extra hour of sleep, maybe two, before his mind simply couldn’t take it anymore.

But at exactly 1:01 AM, even against his best efforts, his eyes popped open. Right on time.

He got up with a sigh and went to his piano, where the Moon shone brightly onto the keys through the window. “Hey, old friend,” he whispered. A, B, C, D, E, then back again. “Top of the morning.”

I’m glad you’re doing well.

“Well?” He almost laughed. “Sure. Well.”

It was his (their?) standard routine—each morning at 1:01 AM, when Harlan Fletcher’s brain decided sleep was just too much trouble, he’d come back to his keyboard, play the same songs he’d been playing for three years now, and have a conversation with the Moon. A, C#, E. “How is it up there?”

Well, he called it a conversation. D, F, A.

Don’t you wish I could tell you?

If he were honest with you, he’d tell you he was just…tired. Tired of being alone and unsteady and ridden with fear, and the Moon gave him a bit of constance, normalcy, companionship. C, E, G.

If he were honest with himself…well, we wouldn’t have much of a story then, would we?

————

Each morning at 1:01 AM, a man speaks to the moon, and each morning, the moon speaks back. Sing of the Moon is a stage play first written in prose, a method designed to flesh out each character and each scene before its translation to the stage.