​​Capricorn Zodiac Highlight

Dark Side of the Moon
Diane Fraser

My sister was a blur. As soon as she could walk, she ran.

I was six and she was four. Mom made us matching outfits to wear to church.
White with green leaves and pink flowers.
She spent an hour tucking in our lace trimmed blouses and socks, taming
Dawn’s ringlets and setting the barrettes just right.

She pushed us together and snapped a polaroid.
There, don’t you girls look beautiful.

Dawn looked at herself, flattening her hands over her jacket
as if she were wiping something off.

The Moon is always female, mother.

We stepped out into bright morning sun, budding trees, pine.
Dawn ran to the right, around the house.
Mom sprinted after her, hobbled by her brown pencil skirt.
I waited.
Dawn zipped around from the left, feet bare and jacket gone,
pulling off her blouse as she flew past.

Mom huffed by a minute later. Hold these, she pushed
Dawn’s discarded shoes, jacket and socks at me.
She circled and returned, Dawn’s blouse and skirt in hand.

Help me find her, Mom said, her face an imploded mask.

I didn’t understand why my sister always kicked off her shoes and went barefoot.
Why she changed her clothes so many times a day.
Why she couldn’t sit and play a game with me.
Why she was always moving moving moving.

The Moon’s light is reflected sunlight.
On a new Moon it’s face is hidden, tucked behind the sun.

Asteroids are minor planets, lumps of metallic iron
that orbit the Sun, Mars and Jupiter.
Named after Greek and Roman Goddesses: Minerva, Juno, Diana, Ceres, Vesta.

Years later, right before, Dawn stopped running, biking, climbing.
She closed our bedroom door and listened to one album again and again.
It meant I couldn’t listen to my music.
It meant I had to listen to that album every night for weeks.
She used it like a shield. Like a wall or an electric fence. Like anesthesia.

I was 17 and Dawn 15 when Mom told Dad
she was done with his fist and his affairs with men
– she filed for divorce.

Dawn ran off and slept at her friends’ houses, in their barns, basements, cars.
Help me find her, Mom said. Go in and pull her out.
Dawn knew Mom’s silver car. She ran further, she hid better.
She slipped behind a man ten years older and hid there.
If we wanted to see her, we had to see him first.

Mom retreated. She nestled into her new boyfriend and disappeared.
At their wedding she glowed bright.
New husband, three new children, and a big new family.

A few months later Dawn married. She was 17.

Soon she would be a Moon too.

It took years to understand my own orbit,
my place in this galaxy.

I will never be a Moon.

I dance wild in the dark with the other asteroids, my iron goddess sisters.