Mother Moon

I am three, and my mother is driving the car at night. I sit in the silent back seat falling in and out of sleep but every time I surface I see a silver eye staring at me. It is the moon. Thirty minutes, an hour, two hours, and still she is there, a spot on my window, so close I could hold her in my cupped hands and not spill. “Mother,” I say, “why does the moon follow me?” “Because she loves you.” I am five, and my mother is lying beside me in my small bed in the awful dark. “Sleep well, my baby,” she sings in Korean, “don’t cry, you rooster or my baby might wake.” But I am only half listening to the surface of my mother’s silver voice. After she leaves, the moon outside goes on humming the rest of her song.