• Sonata Allegro

    Going downstairs, asking where he is.
    He’s been gone so long; as if he’s under
    a fermata on a different page. It rests
    upon our heads. Taking color

    from my skies, holding him away
    from us. Before the words had left mom’s
    lips, I knew what they were going to say.
    I felt the clammy sweat upon my palms.

    Adagio

    The stillness in the room matched the dead
    beat in my bloodstream. Pianissimo
    was how she might have said
    he had left. Her message was fortissimo

    as it reverberated in my mind.
    Crashing, banging mallets on my eardrums,
    doing damage sooner than I could find
    meaning as it slowly sunk in.

    Scherzo

    Surely it just couldn’t be true,
    a sick joke. Cut from nose to navel
    with a sharp; scraps belonging to
    them and not me. Painful as it

    was, I had to keep composure.
    Their duet was now a trio,
    adding a new complex layer over
    an already complicated piece.

    Sonata Rondo

    The A flat violin crescendoed..
    The family in the frame wasn’t true.
    The laundry shivered on its cord.
    The harmonies were all askew.

    Divorce. It looked us in the eye.
    The days we once knew had past,
    crumpled, yellowed pages had flown by.
    I knew this composition was our last.