'A Romantic's Take on July 20, 1969

A Romantic’s Take on July 20, 1969 By Larissa Banitt
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A girl in a cotton dress and cat eye glasses
sits cross legged on the floor,
a copy of Jane Eyre clutched across her chest.
She’s staring at the moon
Through her grainy, rabbit eared television
and thinking of the trope in stories of lovers
torn apart from each other by fate
who look at the moon and find solace
knowing wherever their beloved is,
they have the same moon to look up to.
 
She wonders if the families of the men
On her screen have that same solace now.
Knowing that if they look up to the moon,
Not only will they know their loved ones
Will be looking at it too (between their feet),
But they will be gazing right at them,
though their distance makes the men
smaller than specks of dust.
 
Her parents startle when her book
Thumps on the floor, Her hands
outstretched on the carpet behind her.
They ask if she’s okay; she only nods,
Too embarrassed to say she suddenly felt
Like she had peering into the
Grand Canyon last summer,
As tiny and insignificant as a grain of sand
Next to the expanse of the ocean.
 
She lays in bed that night,
With moonlight casting shadows
across her quilt and decides
That love stories would be much more tragic
If they took place among the stars.
 
 
 
Edited by: Anna Grace Dulaney