half-moon

HALF OF THE MOON HANGS LOW ON THE HORIZON; it’s golden light waging war against the deep purple and black colors of the evening sky. The great slab of rock floats in space as it sends ripples of mystique and melancholy unto anything its borrowed light touches. You can sense the nameless mood stirring, and churning, and spreading like a disease in the cold calm air, moving in stealth without a cure into unguarded and broken citadels of hearts.

Shadow come out to play hide-and-seek, gathering on the empty street’s stretch of concrete, occasionally retreating away from passing vehicles’ headlights that slices the dark. The haunting majesty of the moment is adorned by a faint smell of fresh flowers hovering in the soft wind. The tranquil silence is sporadically broken by the sounds of cats moaning like infants deprived of milk, provoking angry barks from dogs denied of sleep. Lizards with their feet on the ceilings performed their throaty songs in an attempt to outstand the crickets’ monotonous version of Ave Maria. It is a serene night.

Somewhere along the sidewalk, a boy sits alone with his guitar, beholding the beauty and sadness perfectly painted before his eyes which reflected the misty glow of the moon and the stars peeking through the clouds. Skilled fingers start to pluck the strings of the instrument he is hugging like an old friend or perhaps a lost lover found. Each vibrating string sends out a note. The notes finally choose to freely fly from his pockets, to his guitar, and towards the invisible musical measures stretching out into the dark, amplifying the magnificence of the night that it already has.

Sounds escaped the boy’s lips, unintelligible and trembling at first, but slowly transforms into melodic words. He begins to sing the song he wrote on a piece of tissue paper five days ago over a mug of creamed coffee. He speaks the lyrics with care and gentleness as if reading a firsthand poetry to the girl of his dreams. It is a happy song that defies the miserable mood; a bright light in a world of eternal shade, sending blissful and lonely entities into collision; crashing into each other and plunging the night into a chaotic symphony—strange but nonetheless a beautiful blend.

Tonight, half of the moon smiles to the world in a deep slumber as the boy bathed in its light, uttering the verses of a prayer written on a tissue paper crumpled somewhere in his side pocket. With eyes to the star-spangled heavens, he strikes every chord, ever wondering where in the world the other half of his heart might be. It’s there somewhere, lost but finding its way back. Like the dark side of the moon, the answer still masks itself, mysterious until fate decides to unveil itself to him—the other side where the vital piece lies; the chorus of his song; the missing half that would finally make his heart complete and his existence whole.