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Unlike the moon, I can’t change. His crackle that creams the dark is ageless, his disposition sort of staining, to some, he serpentines, constantly breathing like the sea. I don’t want to hear his old song that grows to a piercing shriek but I can’t let him go. Drier than an empty womb, I lay beneath him, the living fossil, entranced by his chalk dance, wishing he’d bleach my yellowness white. He unhatches, stripping from his shell and opening like a frosted bud. He thought I was wasting my beauty, so he took it entirely. His arsenic face haunts me, his ancient teeth gaping at me in mirrors and lakes and I let him infect my sight knowing that I can and will, no must, let him go.