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One night while nobody was watching, the moon turned into an egg. The first person to notice it, the girl who worked at the donut drive-thru, thought at first that a cloud was half covering the moon giving it a funny egg shape. But there was nothing around the moon but stars, stars, stars. And it was not the moon, it was an egg.
"Look at that," said the girl to the man who'd been working late and had stopped for coffee. He looked out of his car window and there it was, the egg moon.
It still looked very moony. It had that faraway, apricot and copper pennies shining through a patch of deep, deep sea water look to it. And it was rising fast, just like the moon did when it was low, losing color as it rose, tugging your heart up after it. It settled itself up in the sky glowing like a pearl. But shaped like an egg.
"Well, damn," said the working late man. He checked the donut he had just bought to make sure it was still round. He did things like that automatically. On the day of his wedding when all his friends had arrived dressed in strange clothes and behaving in ceremonies so that he almost didn't recognize them, he'd checked his bride to make sure she was still the woman he'd decided to marry. The donut was still round and sugary. The moon was shaped like an egg. He wondered if their was someone he should call.
A woman with insomnia came by on a bicycle. She always wished they would make donuts that looked like clock faces. She would only buy the ones set to night hours, to sleeping hours. Midnight. 1:am. 2:am. Then she could eat the night an hour at a time. She wished they could make donuts shaped like sleep.
"Look," said the man and the girl, "Look at the egg moon."
"I wonder if it will hatch tonight," said the woman. Her insomnia made everything seem strange so that strangeness never ruffled her.
"What would hatch out?" wondered the man.
"A moon bird," said the girl. And then she frowned. She liked the moon. When you work third shift and you've never been out of your home town the moon becomes very important to you, sailing by every night. She wouldn't want it to fly away. Before she did.
"Maybe a moon snake," said the sleepless woman.
"Or a moon omelet," said the late man.
The egg moon continued to glow, like Chinese pennies, like rice paper with a candle behind it, like a candle.
And the man who worked late rolled up his window and drove home. And the woman with insomnia bought a donut that was not like a clock and bicycled home. And the girl in the drive-thru started to clean the counter but then she got caught in a wave of yawns. They rolled through her immensely, she felt almost lifted up by tiredness. She clung to the counter like a starfish and then nodded off against it. And back at her apartment the woman with insomnia felt sleep coming in like it did when she was a child, like a massive tide, like a pair of strong arms, like heaviness and sweetness. And the man who worked late dozed in his car, parked in his driveway.
And the egg moon rocked in the dark night sky. The egg moon cracked and bits of shell fell all around the sky like falling stars. And the egg moon toppled in two, up in the dark night sky. And a child rolled out with skin like midnight and eyes like moonlight and hair like apricots and copper pennies. And it popped stars in it's mouth like candy, like sugar drops.
And drifting against the counter the girl thought, "How sweet, how much sweeter than donuts, and headlights".
And bobbing in her soft bed the sleeping insomniac thought, "How strange, how strange."
And docked in his driveway the man who worked late wished for a mirror or a polished plate or a pool to see if he was still himself.
But you can't trust anything that reflects to show when you've changed inside, like a mirror, or a polished plate, or the moon. You should only trust things that themselves change deep, deep, deep inside, like an egg, or a child, or a dream.