Based on an Interview with Xiaoxing, Artist of “mother moon”
Creative Write-up by Janelle Kim

There will be time enough later for noticing the grass stuck in her hair, the ants crawling across the curves of her ankles, and the morning dew soaking sweatpants that had been warm in the dryer minutes ago. In the waking sky’s gray horizon, the only color that exists is moonlight silver.

The moonbeams are staggered through the tree branches, a staircase with too much space between the steps. She traces their path a few times with her fingers in the sky, then once more with worn-down paint brushes on paper. She no longer can recall walking down those stairs, away from the grasp of someone who would call her beloved. She could not recognize her mother’s features beyond the moon’s cratered face.

The blank circle on the page meant for sketching the moon now instead reveals eyes, reflecting the loving gaze of a worried woman bound by nighttime visitations, misted over with raindrop tears. As the sky takes the color of perfectly ripe apricots in the sunrise, she draws the clouds for the blind guardian angel who gave up twenty years, and where there are eyes there is color, a path of light and beauty for Xiaoxing to walk in the painted footsteps of her birth mother.