Moon at Half Past Noon

I got to pay the bills…

My fingers know the price of lentils,
the weight of a lemon,
the cold sweat on a milk carton.

A faint flutter, a sigh of saffron
at the edge of the glass door.

I step out.
Behind me, the cooler drones its one note.
Before me, the street bakes and blares.
And between, a space clears like a lane in parted dust.
A monk. A dust-colored dog.
Not walking to. Walking through.

The march is not a sound. It is an eraser.
It smudges out the scanner’s shriek,
the truck’s complaint, the phone’s tinny plea.
It replaces them with a whimper:
the scuff of leather, the tap of claw,
the vast silence between them—a held breath.

I see the bowl, a wooden curve against orange cloth.
I see the dog’s ribs, veins of a lean survival.
I see the pace: not slow, not fast.
A tempo that says we belong to this motion.
They do not look at me. Their gaze is a soft thing
laid upon the road three feet ahead.

One foot on tile, one on concrete.
The cool of the store at my back.
The sun warming my apron’s bib.
My shoulders, which have held all morning
the tight shape of waiting, drop half an inch.
My breath, which has been a shallow, forgotten thing,
deepens to meet the rhythm of their passing.

It tastes of a riverbank.
Of following a cousin
not because he asked, but because his path
seemed the true one.

That simple allegiance.
The dog knows this. Its tongue lolls
in the comfort of a chosen shadow.

They pass.

The lane of quiet closes behind them like water.
A horn barks, urgent, reclaiming the world.
I stand for three full breaths.
The fluorescent song calls me back
to the lentils, the lemon, the waiting till.
But my soles remember, now, the grit of the walk.
My ears hold the echo of the erased beat.
And for the rest of my shift,
the dust at the threshold smells faintly of saffron,
and every customer passes like a pilgrim,
carrying a silent, bowl-shaped peace.