Moon at Half Past Noon

I. The Room of Voices

I dwell among the ticking clocks of thought,
A kingdom spun from whispers, taut and thin,
Where every joy is measured, bought,
And tethered to the silence within.

Yet sometimes, voices seep between the cracks—
A mother’s hum, half-remembered, warm,
A friend’s sharp laugh (the kind that always smacks
The air like sudden sun through storm).

They linger, smoke-like, curling at the edges,
Familiar, foreign—never fully mine.
I shape them, smooth them, set them on ledges,
But still they shift, resist the line.

II. The Hounds of Memory

O, but the thoughts!
They twitch like restless hounds,
Sniffing at the edges of the gate,
Gnawing the leash of ordered sounds,
Dreaming of the feast beyond the grate.

And you—yes, you—are there among them,
A scent they know too well to quit.
Your name is tangled in the chorus,
A hook caught deep beneath the rib.

I’ve taught them tricks to keep the peace,
To sit, to stay, to heel, to lie.
Yet when they howl, the echoes cease,
And all the room is why, why, why?

III. The Letting Go (Or Not)

Perhaps, the air is thick with unspent rain,
Perhaps, the leash has frayed.
Perhaps, the time has come to drop the chain
And walk into the riot of the shade.

But what of hands I’ve held too late?
The voice that said stay, then turned to go?
The love I locked behind the gate—
Does it rot, or does it grow?

The hounds are loose. The clocks unwind.
The walls dissolve. I am afraid.
Yet something stirs—a pulse, a whine—
A thing I lost. A thing I made.