I hear the roof tiles floating away.
The walls are beginning to disappear along with the pictures of the children who were never cried.
Persian rug becomes moss.
My fading arm chair light watches as the needle falls to wax.
In the parlor that almost was,
La Boheme bleeds from the victrola.
Tethered soul lifts from skin and walks
to the window.
“Che gelida manina…”
That cold little hand, moving lace curtains woven from ether aside to look to the moon for any sign of you.
Reaching across an opera of memory
for your tenor voice proclaiming
he is a poet in love.
My sweet Rodolfo, I must go.
The last of my breath is a song for you.
The spring snow now falls into our bombed sanctuary.
Sacred relics are carried
under the cover of night
to a torch lit cloister where no monk may murmur of us,
yet will not deny
our holiness.