Sometimes

you have to be alone to feel.

Alone in a crowd is

the best place to weep,

don’t ask me why,

it’s got something to do with the acoustics.

Then the moon,

not silver dollar but

ripened orange, touched my cheek.

Smears moved

across the surface,

dragging the dirt from its craters

like crying.

Below, there was a layer of

eerie

midnight wonderland—

like gothic cotton candy

The smoggy cloud cover

shifting among itself,

slowly,

tossing the orange breadth of

the moon from canyon to canyon.

The parts of the clouds

not illuminated do not exist,

black moving

on the black of the sky.

The moon, breathing ever-out

with the syllable “mmm,”

the woosh of a bathtub faucet

just switched on,

the fan left on overnight,

the toilet flushed

down the hostel hallway

at three in the morning,

The moon touched my cheek.

We all learn about religion

the same way,

but we all learn

why people are religious

alone.

For me,

I learned

in aisle 35.