I’ve learned to mark time’s passing by the moon in recent years. Often, I am at home, and the full moon gleams down from high above my neighbours’ roof as I undress. On summer nights, I sometimes stand or kneel or lie in the grass in my small backyard and bask in its luminous kindness. One summer, I find myself in a canoe in Algonquin Park one full moon night, on a cobbled street in Gdańsk by the Baltic Sea the next. And then rewinding one cycle of the sun, I am in an Ontario hardwood forest, a tended fire within shouting distance, on my own semi-solitary vigil within dense circles of community. With a sleeping bag and a brace of mosquitoes I sit through one almost endless night and watch the moon’s glow painstakingly creep its way across the forest floor. But morning always comes, I learn, and then another day, and then another moon. What do I need to find myself at home? Could it be myself and the moon only, wherever I am?

Word prompt: luminous. From my current daily writing by email with three women across the continent.