Moon at Half Past Noon

He stepped off the train with a Delhi face —
the kind that learns not to expect a thing.
It was June. The rain came down
the way it comes when the sea has decided
to take the month back. His umbrella turned
at the second crossing. He stood beneath
a shopfront awning, watching the water
take the road apart, and did not look up.

She was already in it — not beneath,
not waiting, standing in the flood as if
it were a room she owned. She looked at him.
She laughed at the umbrella, at the way
a man holds what has failed him. He stepped out
from under the awning, into it, toward her.