Interesting Ending

I just found an interesting line by Cheryl Snell (all copyrights to her):

The moon
wanes, paler than it should have been.

Thinking a little bit about making this end stronger, I came up with a variant, posting up here mostly for my own sake of remember how this could be a possible twist-ending later on if the end seems to be too deliberate:

The moon / wanes, not the pale as it should have been; / paler.