Moon at Half Past Noon

A name is humming in the kettle’s steam.
A face in the photograph has started to blur.
The clock-hand ticks, but doesn’t move, a dream
of time. I am a forgotten character.

F ootfalls next door are distant, threat’ning drums.
A knock. A man who says he’s from next door.
He asks if I’m alright. His kindness numbs.
I smile. “Of course.” I’ve seen this man before.

T he mirror holds a guest, polite and strange.
His eyes are rooms I almost recognize.
He lifts a hand. I feel the quiet change.
A silent conversation, full of lies.

E choes collect like dust on every shelf.
The key’s cold bite—what lock was it meant for?
The story of my life? I wrote it myself.
But someone has erased the final door.

R ooms breathe in, and settle, and expand.
The hallway stretches into a long, dark vein.
I find a note clutched in my own right hand:
“Your daughter called.” A dull, persistent pain.

L ight pools on the floor, a thick and golden stain.
A voice calls out that it is time to eat.
But was that sixty years, or just this morning? Again,
the past has sturdy bones. The now feels cheap, incomplete.

I n the television’s blizzard, a sudden, perfect face.
A name like sugar melting on my tongue.
A feeling I was certain had a place.
A song I knew before the world was young.

F ade. The air is thickening to gauze.
The clockface is a moon with missing phases.
I am a house that operates on laws
written for me by unseen, changing faces.

E rasure is the weather of this place.
A gentle snow that buries path and track.
I stare at my own hands, a fading trace
of who I was. The light does not come back.