I have lived under about 655 full moons. Twenty-three of them blue. Every one passed over a different version of me. A friend tells me there's a blue moon tonight and I should stand in it and let it cleanse me. I'm not so hippie-dippie that I'm going to hug a crystal and weep. But I'll take it. I'll take every drop of free cosmic power the universe is generous enough to leave lying around. Here's the thing about a blue moon. It's the second full one in a month. The extra. The bonus. The one nobody ordered and the sky sent anyway. Rare. Once every couple years rare. We didn't budget for this rare. Which, funny enough, is exactly what I am. I got eight months I wasn't supposed to get. Eight months of bonus moon. And somewhere in there a blue one slid by while I was busy living while dying, and I didn't even look up, because I assumed, like an idiot, like a man with all the time in the world, that there'd be another. Fifty-three years. Almost. This is only the twenty-third blue moon I've ever lived under, and I counted exactly none of them until the math got interesting. Funny how you start counting moons right about when they tell you to stop counting on them. This week I washed something off. Walked out of a room that had been dimming me and didn't look back. And damned if the moon didn't show up the same week offering to do the same job. Cleansing. Sure. Why not? The moon and I are in the laundry business now. Here's the part that gets me. There's a birthday coming. Less than a month out. One I did the quiet math months ago and figured I'd miss by a mile. I'm going to make it. I'm going to stand under tonight's moon, number twenty-three, the one I wasn't supposed to see, and I'm going to say out loud— to the sky, to my mother, to all of it You wanted to know if I'd come back around. Well. Once in a blue moon, something rare and unbudgeted shows up anyway. Refuses to leave. Shines like it has somewhere better to be, and chooses here. Chooses now. Chooses one more. Look up. I'm the blue one.