I read this story over at TheNewYorker.com.
It puzzled me, but this paragraph, I think, would best encapsulate what it is the story is trying to tell:
"In this world where every object was thrown away at the slightest sign of breakage or aging, at the first dent or stain, and replaced with a new and perfect substitute, there was just one false note, one shadow: the moon. It wandered through the sky naked, corroded, and gray, more and more alien to the world down here, a hangover from a way of being that was now outdated..."
And then, follows another brilliant paragraph:
"Ancient expressions like “full moon,” “half-moon,” “last-quarter-moon” continued to be used but were really only figures of speech: how could we call “full” a shape that was all cracks and holes and that always seemed on the point of crashing down on our heads in a shower of rubble? Not to mention when it was a waning moon! It was reduced to a kind of nibbled cheese rind, and it always disappeared before we expected it to. At each new moon, we wondered whether it would ever appear again (were we hoping that it would simply disappear?), and when it did reappear, looking more and more like a comb that had lost its teeth, we averted our eyes with a shudder..."
Sheer genius. Just the mere thought of the moon dying... Won't that change everything the way we've known them to be?
The story ends with these lines:
"...we realize that now is when life begins, and yet it is clear that what we desire we shall never have."
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