Moon at Half Past Noon

The silk of your sari is a loud, electric red.
It doesn’t look like you. It looks like a word I haven’t said.
The music pounds, a modern beat, not an old shehnai’s cry.
And my throat gets tight, remembering a smaller sky.

We were two weeds fighting through the same cracked cement,
In a house that always smelled of damp and spent
Dreams. You were the fire, quick to blaze, but you knew
When to be quiet, when the storm would pass through.

I was the brick wall, stubborn, shouting to be heard,
My rebellion a silent, seething word.
We shared a room so small our thoughts would mix in the air.
Fights over a phone charger, who got to sit where.

The slam of a door. The cold war over a borrowed dress.
Then, a note slipped under the door to confess.
You, scrolling through photos of a boy I didn’t like,
Me, telling you he was wrong, for your own sake.

But at night, in the dark, with the streetlight’s glow,
Your whisper was the only truth I would know.
I remember the chill. The winter that got inside our bones.
The single heater we’d huddle around, hearing the tired tones

Of our parents’ voices, a map of their stress.
Then, the click of your laptop, a quiet fierceness.
My own screen, glowing with designs I had drawn.
We were the quiet earthquake before the dawn.

Your code, my art—the new kind of family business.
Paying bills, buying a better fridge, a new mattress.
The first time we ordered a cab on an app, a silent win.
The slow-motion movie of our family crawling out of the thin,
Hard years.

Now you stand there. A filter of perfection.
A beautiful stranger in this new connection.
They say it’s not goodbye. Just the next street over.
But this hug feels different. It’s a chapter closing cover.

We cry messy, ugly cries, right there in the crowd.
Our makeup runs, and we don’t care. We are allowed
This one moment of truth.
We don’t say the real thing.

That our daily world is suddenly a loose string.
That our late-night texts will now have a delay.
That our inside jokes might slowly fade away.
We know life is a pull in different directions.

Our bond will be tested by our own ambitions.
So the music plays a happy song.
And I hold you, knowing where you belong
Is no longer just with me. My sister, my old fight.
I hold you tight, and I make my grip light.
And I let you go into your bright, new light.