Lament for Piano

By Ev Dearborn

Song carves through the lounge in disharmony,
Collapsing in the foyer, to lay down on its belly by the stairwell.

Her spine, feline.
She convulses, coughs, grits her teeth and contorts,
A mass of four slender limbs, elbows bent back and knees strained white.
Veins like tendrils, half-exposed and dry.
In dying dance she tells me of love,
“Love minus medicine equates to rot,” A twist in the stomach of sound,
“Feel me swell, O’ feel me sway!” In chordophonious voice, she groans,
“Silence is painful, but song is agony!”

The song my hands mime, a familiar lamentation she mutilates.
My creation, her cacophony, a death duet for piano.

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