We only ever met when the blue moon shone, a rare beacon in the night sky. I could hardly believe how vibrant it was, how strangely similar it was to your smile – both precious and elusive, yet on display for the time being, for the human being they had come to perform for.

 

The cycle repeated, as if our stars had aligned. You never made me doubt that you could see it, too.

 

I suppose this is what they meant when they called us lunatics, lovers of the improbable.

 

On those nights, the moon was almost blinding, a shimmering orb that transported us from the world we knew. I often wondered what gave it that hue – was it a trick of the light, a glare off my lenses, or could they see it, too? It was difficult to make out the craters when the surface appeared so smooth, hard to see the dullness beneath when the sun reflected your light in my eyes.

 

My footsteps marked their place in the snow as I approached the launch site, fading like forgotten wishes as I ascended to your door. Every three months the cycle began anew, the snow sticking to my boots until I reached you, bathing us both in blue.

 

This is when the mission begins. You take the captain's chair, and I surrender to your whim. Nothing goes wrong; the mechanics work perfectly in harmony. The stars spin around us, blurs clouding my sight, whizzing by at a speed incomprehensible to mere human eyes. Time grants us this moment, the universe offering a rare and fleeting peace until our feet meet the earth again.

 

The rose-colored glasses become tainted by blue. The color of twilight turns into a stain I never want to wash out, like your scent I wish would forever cling to my own body. I am deprived of oxygen and nitrogen and air, breathing in the moon and the moon alone. Could it be possible to take a bite of its flesh, to have the moon be a part of me forever?

 

We stayed there for hours. Nobody even knew we had left the planet. There was no point in taking photos – it would never look the same to them as it did to us, we who had conquered the blue moon and seen it with our naked eyes.

 

And so, the cycle repeated, every night without the blue moon stretching longer than the last, until it appeared again. I learned to accept the snow, and the cold that I had so often feared. I grew to cherish the space that you created for us, a space that sometimes expanded between us. We were one on the blue moon, though the flames of the earth below lurked in the shadows, licking at the ozone with their orange tongues. For a moment, I was filled with the wonder of a child again, thrilled to finally be good enough to ride on your rocket ship through the cosmos.

 

Yet, the conspiracy theorists still called it a hoax. The means to get to the blue moon were inaccessible, the technologies mere fantasies. They went so far as to say it was all a trick masterminded by the captain, that he fooled even his own copilot into believing they had conquered the blue moon, time and time again. They argued that it was impossible, and how could the theorists be blamed? There was not even a scrap of evidence to quell their doubts.

 

They ask me to recount the tale, or perhaps I do so without coercion. I can sense the scrutiny in their hungry eyes, the disbelief that dawns on their faces as I describe the way the moon hugged my fingers and caressed my bones. They warn of the dangers of the blue moon and the captain who takes me there, attempting to convince me that a life there is a fleeting illusion, that the blue moon's atmosphere is unsustainable and uninhabitable. If I spend all night basking in aquamarine light, and all day dreaming of it, I am bound one day to be drowned by it.

 

‘But the captain is my guide, and I trust him with my life. He has journeyed to the moon many times before, and he promises to show me the magic in its beams. He says it does wonders for the skin and for the hair.'

 

It has been weeks since you last made contact, but perhaps we will stay longer on the moon next time.

 

The cycle repeats.

 

Another three months pass, the mission's impending course sending spots into my irises before the snow can even stick. But something is wrong this time, you stare into my eyes as you take your helmet off.

 

Breathing in nothing at all is much different than breathing in the moon. This is a suffocation I hope never becomes permanent. I'm appalled that you are still able to breathe without your helmet on, that you are somehow able to walk away while I gasp for air, while I beg for the blue moon not to vanish from the sky forever.

 

The last mission failed, if it was even a mission at all. The theorists were right; the blue moon landing was a hoax. The captain tricked his naïve copilot as they stumbled blindly among the stars, leaving a trail of blue light in his wake that fades more with each night the dull white moon rises instead.

 

I still look up each twilight, later and darker than the one before, wishing to see the blue moon just once again. But as I search for that rare moon on my own, a cloudy red dawn haunts the sky in your place.