Moon at Half Past Noon

I began to choose the perimeter, the long way home,
my quiet auto tracing arcs on streets I’d never seen—
past the evening chai-walla’s plume of steam,
the temple’s iron bell a dull, familiar sound I left behind.

You took the mahogany harmonium from its case at dusk,
and let the ragas swell, a wall of music I was meant to sleep through.
We had perfected the artistry of keeping distance,
a flawless, slow-motion ballet around the last piece of jalebi’s gold,
the last word, the last clear sight of the shared festival.

It was a deeply courteous truce,
a pact made without speaking,
like an old wedding song we both still knew by heart,
now hummed in two separate, careful keys,
each lonely note a separate, fierce-burning star
in the same darkening sky.