Moonwork

A cycle of shedding, ripening, and becoming 🜃

“It is not the moon, I tell you. It is these things.”
— Louise Glück, The Wild Iris

—

Some selves come back
without asking.
Not to be witnessed,
but to remain.

They return in phases—
less certain,
more whole.

—

Phases of Return
A moonlit anatomy of becoming

🜃

New Moon

There was no light yet. Only listening.

I wasn’t ready to be seen.
Not by the world.
Not by myself.

I moved through those days like breath through glass—
barely touching anything,
leaving no mark.

Still, something in me was forming.
Slow, mineral.
Not voice, not vow.
Only the beginning of a pull.

In the garden,
I touched the soil to remember my name.
I salted the edge of each meal.
I slept with the window unlatched,
as if the wind might know something I didn’t.

There are beginnings that don’t announce themselves.
They rustle.
They wait.

I was the rind split open in your sleep.

And what if this time,
I didn’t rush to become the light?

—

Waxing Crescent

The faintest arc—
not absence, but entry.

I was learning how to want again.
Not loudly.
Not like a hunger—
but like a scent rising off warm stone.

Each day, a soft arc toward visibility.
I wrote without needing the words to hold.
I opened the door without needing to leave.
I lit the candle without needing it to last.

There was a tenderness in the almost.
A relief in the half-known.

Some selves don’t return with answers.
They return with temperature.

Once, I stood in the doorway so long
I became part of its hinge.

What part of me is trying to speak
before I name it?

The moon rose again, listening.

—

First Quarter

Half-lit, half-hidden.
The tension of arrival.

I started noticing the weight of things I hadn’t carried.
Laughter that didn’t belong to me.
Warmth that arrived only when I withdrew.

Somewhere between concealment and clarity,
I felt the pull of the unspoken.
Not silence—
but velvet soaked in saltwater.

My hands remembered how to reach
before I did.
My body began marking time differently—
in the tilt of shoulder blades,
the softness behind my knees.

The moon rose,
not to illuminate,
but to listen.

I was the faint breath on the mirror,
evaporating before I could speak.

Am I becoming myself,
or undoing who I never was?

—

Waxing Gibbous

The body carries more light than it can name.

I wanted to stop mid-way—
before the shape took hold.
To stay in the not-yet,
where longing still had somewhere to go.

The air was bruised with sweetness.
Like fruit at the edge of ripeness.
Like the pause before a truth
you’re not ready to live.

I could feel it—
something in me unfolding,
not toward solution,
but toward pressure.

I wasn’t gathering clarity.
I was holding gravity.
A richness that couldn’t speak
but needed presence.

Once, I looked at a bowl of figs
and wept.
Not because they were beautiful—
but because they had lasted.

What in me is ripening
without my permission?

The moon rose again, listening.

—

Full Moon

Everything revealed is still becoming.

For a moment, I saw the whole field—
its curve, its hush, the distant shimmer.
It wasn’t the light that startled me,
but how long it had been
since I’d let myself be held inside it.

I’d imagined arrival would feel like peace.
Instead, it felt like wind across bare skin—
sharp, tender, alive.

The moon offered no answers.
Only exposure.
Only the ache of being wholly visible
to something that wanted nothing.

I remembered:
the moon holds no light of her own.
Only what is offered,
and what she dares to reflect.

Maybe that’s all I’ve ever done—
caught what came,
held it against the dark
until it looked like mine.

Is this what it means—
to be lit from elsewhere
and still be whole?

—

Waning Gibbous

What the light doesn’t keep,
the body still remembers.

After the swell, I didn’t dim.
I loosened.
Like a fig ripening past sweetness,
the skin thinning from within.

There was no rupture.
Only a soft giving.
A kind of becoming that split me,
but not apart—
open.

I caught my own scent in the folds of a scarf
and it startled me—
not because it was familiar,
but because it wasn’t.
Not quite mine.
Not quite lost.

What broke open
to let the light in?

Even as the brightness receded,
I noticed what remained:
the salt on my collarbone,
a voice I hadn’t heard in years
speaking through my hands.

I wasn’t absence.
I was the trace.
The body still carrying
what it had once become.

The moon rose again, listening.

—

Dark Moon

I was never missing.
Only turned.

—

—

Shedding Moon
(a poem)

I thought I had to hold
one shape
to be held.

But the moon kept showing
how to leave
without absence—
how to shed a self
and still return
to light.

She arrived in phases,
not to withhold,
but to become.

Waning, waxing—
never apologising
for the part
she could not show.

And so I tried.
To grow quieter.
To change without flinching.
To trust that what thins
is still becoming.

Even as a sliver,
I was whole—
only hidden
beneath the shadow.

That was the lesson, wasn’t it—
that I could go
and still be
here.

—rb

—

A Ritual for Returning
six invitations in moonlight

(New Moon)

Close your eyes and face north.
Let the back of your throat
answer the dark.

(Waxing Crescent)

Place a fig,
or something nearly overripe,
in a bowl beside your bed.
Sleep beside its scent.

(First Quarter)

Lean against a closed door.
Feel the resistance.
Whisper something
you’re not ready to hear.

(Waxing Gibbous)

Walk without destination
until your shadow disappears.
Turn around.
Notice what follows.

(Full Moon)

Stand in water
up to your knees—
river, basin, memory.
Speak aloud the name
you no longer use.

(Waning Gibbous)

Undo one thing you did
with certainty.
Not to correct it,
but to remember softness.

—

The Golden Hour: Moonwork
for those drawn to cycles of shedding, ripening, and return

This week’s Golden Hour companion includes:

• a voice note of Shedding Moon
• a hand-drawn lunar spiral—a map of the phases,
offered as a visual companion to the soft work of return.
• a trio of quotes to carry—each a fragment of the larger rhythm.
Not explanations, but alignments offered for those walking
the soft arc of becoming.

If this thread moved something in you—
you’re warmly invited to step inside.

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