Moon Child, Moon Rabbit by Angelina Tang (15, New York)*

     Lost rabbits wander aimlessly, towards an end with no resolution.
    This I am sure of.

    Moon child. That is what I am; that is what you are. Someone who reflects the light of a higher order and glows so brilliantly it must be false; someone who takes and takes and takes and shines, who forces others to gaze up at them and attain a desire they had never once seen possible.
    And there is a field before you, a field filled with fog, and it is day. You cannot see any further than a step before eternity melts into an indecipherable, tangled web of droplets too small to inspect, each one a possibility you may miss. And with you are many other moon children, side by side, facing straight ahead with chins up and doubt in their eyes, and it is day and it is foggy and you have nothing to reflect.
    The sun is gone.
    What do you do?

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    Moon child, moon rabbit.
    I am the girl of a fearful streak, long, chocolate ears raised high, always listening, silent.
    I can hear your steps in the fog, one by one, running blindly towards the same direction and making a competition out of it, because your pace, and the others’ and others’, they increase by the second, and I am out of rhythm.
    A moon rabbit with a lame foot weighed down by a metal loop, one with the number two on it. Destined from the day I awoke and was tagged to always be second-best, a streak of bad luck.
    How can I keep to your pace; how can I see through the fog and reach the end?
    Is there an end?
    I am a step behind you, but I am not entirely mindless. We are all running towards a briefly flickering light (or maybe a hallucination), blindly, without sleep and without a thing to eat and with reckless abandon in pursuit of a conglomerate of things, things, things. What you want, I no longer know; is it a grade, a word of praise, a paper with a number on it, a recommendation note, or an acceptance letter? I watch you collect the trinkets—a post-it that says I love you, a piece of wood carved with You’ll never make it. A voice tells you you’re not enough, now go do this and you will be, but you aren’t and you’re hungry for it, you’re willing to starve for it.
    If I am to reach my hand out to you, I do not know if you would turn. Would you care at all, I wonder, for the wishes of the rabbit with a rotten foot, a rotten rib, a screw loose, telling you to stop and here’s something to eat and a blanket to sleep on?
    
    I am hungry for it, too, and I want to starve, if only to become like you.
    It seems to work, at least. You, who has everything I want to have and yet lost everything that I still cling to; equals in the worst way, unbalanced yet in ragged tandem. I know you too well, and I fear it.
    I look over your shoulder, all bandaged skin and decaying bone, and I try to see through the fog, if there is an end to it. What are you self-destructing for–what is everything else self-destructing for? Is it that you wish for death?
    I would say that I know how you feel.

    There is a weight around my foot and a weight around my neck.
    It is a jade necklace, carved in the shape of a rabbit. It bears the persistent smell of herbs that permeates my pores and nerves, colors me in shades of green, gently, so unlike the clouded violence of envy; it speaks in prayer of longevity, of years and years and years to come, so many I’ll start taking them for granted. The moment I begin to do that is when I will begin to die.
    But I listen to it, and I wish not for death no longer, not with this verdant anchor.

    There is a fog around us, and it is closing in.
    I will carry you if I must, but I desperately want to believe that there is something we are running towards. A future: a light to reflect and shine, something worth the pain and the tears and the anger and the fear. Something worth the work.
    Something at the end of these four years, something at the end that is more than an acceptance letter and more than a diploma. Something that begins to lift the fog, to clear the view to the meadows where we can finally rest and be at ease.
And to you, the moon rabbit with one gouged into your leg–I hope you will be there to see the clouds clear and the night shining down upon us once more, for the sun to reflect off of our soft, small bodies, to illuminate even the bones.
So live, and live with me, because I don’t think I can reach the pointless end if you go.

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