Timothy raps on the back door.
His cheeks are flushed in patches,
and his brown eyes sparkle.
“If you want to see the telescope,
you gotta come right now.”
I pull him inside so he won’t freeze
while I put on my shoes and jacket.
The kitchen smells like warm bread,
and he sniffs. “Mmm,” he says,
and I tell him, “My dad’s baking today.”
“Your dad? That’s cool.
All set?”
We run to Mr. Dell’s garage, careful
not to slip in the muddy patches in our yards.
Timothy slides the heavy door shut behind us.
He leads me to the back of the garage,
past all Mr. Dell’s machines,
where the windows are as tall as the ceiling
and curved at the top.
Planted near the windows is the telescope
pointed toward the sky,
like a kid gazing at the stars
in wonder.
Timothy bends over and looks in the eyepiece,
turns a knob, turns it some more,
then waves me to him.
“Can I?” I ask, the words shaking in my throat.
“You can look through it,” he says,
“but do not touch it.”
I clasp my hands behind me,
just to show him I will not touch it,
and bend over the eyepiece
and look
at nothing
but blue sky.
“Be patient,” Timothy says.
So I look again and wait,
for something to come into view.
And it does—
at first I see an edge so bright I have to blink,
and curved like the peel of an onion—
the moon, so close.
It’s peering back at me
as it slides across the circle of lens,
a waxing crescent
dark,
silent,
enormous.
I see its pockmarks—
its craters and seas—
though it tries hard to hide them
in our shadow.
“I will touch you,” I whisper,
but Timothy says, “I said no touching.”
His words pull me back
to Earth.