The same moon

Sometimes I wonder, does the moon look the same from the other side of the world? Is it a lantern in your winter, like a blossom half unfurled? Does it silver your rivers as it does my windowpane, turning roofs to small, bright islands in an archipelago of rain? I send the question outward, folded neat as paper boats— each doubt a little hull I set upon the tidal moats. If we both whispered upward to that patient, distant glow, would it gather all our echoes in one white drift of snow? Tonight my kettle breathes; a window fogs and clears. Your night must have its breathing too, its fog, its salted years. We read by the same pale coin, though our margins aren’t the same: your mango leaves made porcelain, my fire escape made flame. I picture how it answers you: a milk-white bowl of calm, how it answers me: a bandage laid across my palm. Different tongues of water, different clocks of light, but the moon keeps one address for every kind of night. So I keep sending questions, boats along the tidal swirl, to learn if the moon looks the same from the other side of the world— and when your window gathers it, and mine does too, we know: we’re two shores of one letter, carried by a single glow.