The moon was sliced right down the middle, so perfectly in half, and though they knew it was the sun’s harsh beams that made it appear incomplete, they took it in and said it was okay. Tomorrow night would be different. It wouldn’t always look so partial. To her, it was lonely. He could see the reflection of it in her eyes, out of the corner of his own, and he wanted to comfort her, tell her that he would always be there to draw the complete moon with his index finger. There were Christmas songs playing, the happy ones that made them think of past Christmases around fake plastic trees guarded by hastily wrapped gifts barely worth a dollar or two. They kept walking forwards, not really knowing where, just walking, and her shoe got stuck in a patch of mud. It made a sinking sound, a thump. He thought it strange, how much like quicksand it was, but his feet wouldn’t stop moving towards the end of the street, and he could hear her cries. He could almost see her, though his eyes were still at the moon, and he knew that she was trying to use both hands to lift her sneaker, but it sank and sank and he walked and walked until it was dawn and eventually he couldn’t see the moon anymore and he couldn’t hear her calling his name, his unpleasant name. When he finally stopped, thighs burning with use, he realized his feet were bare and his shoes had been lost somewhere in the night. He imagined the moon had sucked them up to teach him a lesson. The ground was so dry and yellow, not even the concrete that wrapped around the city anymore. He guessed that he had walked much too far from humanity and had finally reached the desert that he had seen in books. The wind whirled forward and he tripped, dug his knees into the sand, and started to recite poems he had memorized in school. There was one. One about a blue guitar and a man who could play a tune that changed the people around him. Then all the people wanted the guitarist to play that tune and he promised them that he could and that it would transform them. But only on that blue guitar could he play it, and he thought how if the guitarist had to cut himself in two, the guitar would be on one side of the guillotine and his body would be on the other. And it made him wonder if people always get cut in twos, threes, or fours, or if it’s just the sun’s glint that tells them they’re temporarily severed.