Photo by Jennifer Aldrich

Now the sun had heard from the singing stars about how his cousin the moon had asked her mother to make her a gown and had been refused. Her mother warned her that there was nothing to fit her figure. For when she was new, the moon was less than a tinder, and when she was full, she was a great shining globe in the sky. So the moon had been hanging in the sky naked and bright throughout all time, exposed every night by the sun’s laughing light.

One night after taking particular joy in embarrassing his kin, the sun decided to see his father, the master tailor, about getting himself a good pair of trousers—just to remind the poor girl of her evanescence. When he asked his father about being fitted for some pants, his father shook his head: “You’re in no better spot than the moon. Though you’re constant, you burn up everything that gets close to you.”

For a while, I wrote fables and fairy tales as a way to unwind. Most, like this one, came to me in dreams. Sometimes I was awake, and sometimes I wasn’t.