The moon setting is a metaphor for:

sleeping with all the things we are scared of. Sleeping in the shellscrape makes me feel like I am sleeping in my grave. Makes me believe we are all lying in a mass grave. Wrapped up in green, perhaps I am more of a cocoon buried and waiting for the sign to wake up. At night, all I can see are shades of dark. In this darkness, I feel small and fearful, as though I am using a separate mind preoccupied with wildly different ideas than the one I use when it was bright out.

I am afraid that the fruits of the tree would land on my face when I close my eyes and I will wake up screaming. I am afraid that the ants and flies would come to my warmth. I am afraid that the sand on either side would slip in and I would be buried alive, blissfully unaware of the plight.

I am afraid the shadow moves. I am afraid the leaves falling loudly and crisply are actually footsteps. I am afraid of looking around or up or looking at all. In the darkness of the moon’s light, I feel small and fearful.

I am also afraid of this path that I have chosen. How many others would have fit snugly into the ground and stared into the forest sounds and know that this is the life waiting for them. Now I am cold and scared and have walked away from a place of warmth where my mother and brother would always wait at the dinner table. The food is steaming yellow and the shadows flicker across their smiles waiting for the universe to step out from their lips and take me home. They are always lonely. And waiting. And fearful for me.

As I watched the moon crawl across the sky along the axis for its setting, I felt like a clammy corpse, rotting out of sight from all things civilian and comfortable. This is the path I have chosen and I will walk. Sometimes I am scared. But I will have to close my eyes and sleep with that.