How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

I asked the night a thousand times
beneath old skies of silver lace,
where lonely songs and whispered rhymes
still wandered through a vanished place.

A place of train smoke, silk, and pearls,
of handwritten letters tied with a string,
where restless boys and dreaming girls
believed forever meant a ring.

I think I knew that world once.

A world of velvet midnight bars,
of cigarette glow and summer rain,
where lovers measured time by stars
and carried sweetness mixed with pain.

Perhaps I was born too late,
Or perhaps the century slipped away
while I was still standing at the window,
watching for someone
who never came.

For there are evenings when memory
reaches through the years like a ghost,
and my heart aches for places
I have never seen,
for songs I somehow already know,
for promises made beneath streetlamps
that have long since gone dark.

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?

Perhaps you do not hold it at all.

Perhaps it settles softly on your skin,
silver and fleeting as a lover's kiss,
before slipping away like a midnight train,
leaving behind only the scent
of jasmine perfume,
old paper,
and words that were never spoken aloud.

The pale light gathers across your body
like a hymn sung low in an empty church,
revealing every gentle curve,
every scar time has left behind,
Every story carried quietly beneath the skin.

Not broken stories.

Surviving stories.

The kind that leaves a woman softer in some places,
stronger in others.

The kind that teaches her how to keep loving
even after love has wounded her.

You wear them beautifully—

the waiting,
the wanting,
the wounds,
the hope.

Like old soul singers wore heartbreak
inside voices roughened by life,
turning sorrow into something sacred,
something worth remembering.

And there, between shadow and light,
You become a song yourself.

Half memory.
Half desire.

A woman standing at the edge of yesterday,
still listening for footsteps
that never quite returned.

The moonlight lingers for a moment,
resting upon your skin like a blessing,
and suddenly you are not merely beneath its glow—

You are part of it.

A beautiful thing.
A fleeting thing.
A thing touched by longing.

The ache between the notes of a soul song.
The pause before the chorus begins.
The last dance before the lights come on.

And perhaps that is the answer.

You do not hold a moonbeam in your hand.

You hold it in your heart,

where old loves still linger,
where forgotten promises still bloom,
where impossible dreams refuse to die,

and where every century you have ever missed
waits patiently for you

in the silver hush

between memory