Outside, the tree branches tapped a Morse code against the house… Snow shimmered, luminescent beneath the full moon, the stars like ornaments in the tops of the trees. Scientists now believed that the moon had been formed when another planet sideswiped the Earth, dislodging huge chunks of its crust, which flew off into space and became the moon. She thought of Noah, of how in so many ways he was this to her, the part of her life that had broken off--the life not lived. Maybe those unused pieces of your past become their own entity. A moon. Another planet. A place without gravity or sound. A place without wind or rain or weathering or erosion, so that even the smallest surface markings, each one a kind of memory, stayed in place for years.  And yet always it was there, the moon--the past--waxing and waning, exerting its force over the tides of the life you lived now.

Maribeth Fischer, The Life You Longed For