Absent Protagonist

The festival arrives
with lanterns in other people’s windows,
mooncakes on other people’s tables.

All day the rain has practiced
its soft, relentless drumming,
until the sky is one thick, dark blanket
with no seam for light to slip through.

At night I step outside anyway,
tilt my head back,
search the black for the host of this feast—
the round silver face that is supposed to rise,
to pull thoughts of home out of us
like tides.

Nothing.
Only cloud, heavy and unmoving,
as if the heavens have drawn a curtain
and refused the performance.

The wind finds the bare skin of my arms,
raises small, cold hills of goosebumps.
The forecast was right again:
temperature dropping,
night turning sharp.

I stand there shivering,
asking the obvious, foolish question:
Why doesn’t the main character of the festival show up?

Then another thought, quieter, more dangerous:
Maybe she stays away on purpose.

If she rose tonight—
perfect, full, untarnished—
I would have to look at her.
In that clear light, every distance would sharpen:
the hometown I no longer live in,
the friends scattered like seeds,
and my mother,
who lives now in a world without weather,
without rain, without moon.

Gazing at that bright disc,
I would become the classic scene:
a lone figure under the mid-autumn moon,
heart cracking open in the old, familiar way.

Perhaps the sky knows this.
Perhaps the clouds are not cruelty,
but a kind of protection—
a soft, gray mercy
that spares me the full force
of my own longing.

So I let the rain have the night.
Let the moon stay hidden behind her dark veil.
I keep my head low,
arms wrapped around my own cold,
and in the sound of falling water
I say her name
without needing a mirror in the sky
to tell me how much I miss her.