Wherever I slept, the moon followed. I didn’t realize it until later—how loyal it was. How it showed up through every window I pressed my face against, watching cities blur and languages shift.

I grew up in motion. Childhood folded into cardboard boxes so often I stopped unpacking all the way. Every time I started to belong, we left. Every time I let a place hold me, it slipped through my fingers like light.

But the moon... the moon never asked where I was. It just kept finding me. Silent. Whole. Familiar.

I lived by phases before I even knew the moon had them. And every new place began as a new moon—hollow, unlit, unfamiliar. I arrived empty each time, unsure of who I was supposed to become, still echoing with the voice of the home I’d just left behind.

I remember a window that opened to a garden. I was maybe five. I thought the moon lived in our backyard. It felt that close—tied to the rosemary and the soil, like it had grown there beside me. I used to wave to it like it was a friend, and maybe it was. No one had told me not to believe in things like that yet. I’d fall asleep before I could ask my questions out loud—but I always knew the moon heard them anyway.

That was my first crescent—small, blooming, just beginning to glow.

Then we moved. Again. Boxes taped and retaped, promises mumbled. The new place had harder air. The kind that scratched your throat when you laughed.

The window faced a loud street, neon and sirens, always humming. That moon looked tired. I did too.

That was my first quarter—half-lit, half-lost. I learned to sleep with noise. Learned to smile at adults and cry only when they weren't looking.

I remember hiding behind the sofa while voices fought in the kitchen. My palms pressed flat to the floor. My heartbeat louder than their shouting.

Then came a colder place. A language I didn’t speak. A school where I didn’t know when to laugh. I pointed to bread at the bakery because I didn’t know how to ask for it. The cashier sighed. I blushed. That night, I pressed my forehead to the windowpane. It smelled like snow and old radiator heat.

That was the waxing gibbous—almost full, almost sure, almost belonging.

The moon was farther away, but it still showed up. I stopped waving by then. But I still looked. Maybe I was hoping it would wave back.

There was a small apartment once, above a bakery that smelled like burnt sugar. The window in that room was too high for me to reach. So I lay on the floor and waited for the moon to fall into the frame.

It always did.

Patiently. Like it had nowhere better to be.

And then, a room with a window that didn’t open. That place felt like a box someone forgot to label. I taped a drawing of the moon to the wall and pretended it was real. Pretended I was real.

That was the full moon—too much light. Too much pretending. I was visible and invisible at once.

People asked, “Was it hard, moving so much?”

I wanted to say, "It was a different kind of hard."

Like forgetting your best friend’s name. Like starting a sentence in one country and finishing it in another.

That was the waning phase. I began shrinking myself to fit whatever came next. I said "I’m fine" more than I said my own name. I learned to leave without leaving traces.

But the moon kept showing up.

I started talking to it again when I got older. Not out loud—just in the language behind my ribs.

Don’t forget me, I whispered. Don’t let me forget me.

Now, when I look back, I don’t remember the walls or the streets. I remember the windows. The moonlight. The feeling of being halfway between staying and leaving.

I remember the girl I was in each house. Each city. Each hour before sleep.

The girl who was always beginning again. The girl who never got to stay. The girl who carried herself like luggage—never fully unpacked, always ready to go.

But here’s the strange part: I never stopped growing.

Even in the leaving, I was becoming. Even in the quiet, I was gathering the pieces I’d need later. Even in the emptiness, I was learning how to hold.

I’ve lived through every phase the moon has to offer. I’ve waxed and waned and broken and returned. I’ve learned to love the darkness as much as the light.

So when people ask me where I’m from, I say, “Everywhere.” And when they ask me where home is, I say, “Anywhere the moon can find me.”

Because it always does.