ROGUES GALLERY 4: Sarah Allen

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Author's Bio:  Sarah is a fan-girl and uber-dork working on submitting her first novel and drafting her second. She memorized The Cat in the Hat at age three and has loved reading ever since, which made graduating in English an easy decision. She writes short stories and poetry as well and has been published in several literary magazines such as The Tipton Poetry Journal, Atlas Poetica and Boston Literary Magazine. She is a social media nerd and blogs at http://fromsarahwithjoy.blogspot.com/. She is a slytherpuff, anglophile and Jane Austen groupie. She is a sevret lover of jazz and post-grunge rock, and a not so secret lover of Colin Firth, white chocolate, cavalier king charles spaniels and Frasier.

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Lunatic by Sarah Allen.

I am in love with the man in the moon. Lunatic is what they would call me if they found out. But lunatic is not always a bad thing.

I am in love with the man in the moon. I wait for him, wait for him to pour through the atom-thin cracks in my window, wait for him to rise from the moon dust, the particles of light.

He is the color of the moon. His eyes and hair streak light across my wooden floor, from his face to mine. I could bathe in that light. And if I did, I would be trapped with him in his night-cage, freedom in being trapped anywhere with him. The bars would be pillars of light.

Fingers touch me like moonlight. Then I know he is here. I don’t turn around. I sit still and let him pour in around me.

Cities, lost dogs, asphalt in the rain is what he talks about. As he speaks I can see the road glistening like obsidian, muddy paws at the bakery’s front door. Oh, the things he sees, the things he shines his light on.

We ride together like a Ferris wheel, up and around the world, around the night. I am cold, and he wraps his pale arms around me. We watch morning birds emerge from their trees. You are the morning bird, he tells me. I have never wanted so badly to be caged.

Again, I wait. I wait while he is pulled back through my window, beam by beam fading slowly. I wait until there is nothing left but his reflected face in the glass. I wait until that, too, is gone. Then there is only me, alone in my blue-grey room, wrapped in a blanket flecked with moon dust.