Jealousy

Her fingers danced across his shoulder,

traced a line up the back of his neck, and

brushed through locks of umber brown.

Wry lip corners curved upward, behind

the frame of her shining blonde's arc,

as his eyes fixed and smiled on hers.

My neck muscles tightened as I

let out a silent scream,

muffled by tongue and cheek.

--Alicia (2010)

Nocturne in D Flat Major

I can’t stop listening

to 
Chopin’s Nocturne in D flat major.

Quietly forceful, lyrical, sad,

it reminds me of you.

Staring at my computer screen

in an empty coffee shop at dusk,

I can’t force myself to write

my Music History paper.

There is nothing for me to say

about Mozart’s harmonic structure.

All I have is a list of things

unsaid on that last afternoon

as I stared into your ocean blue,

right across the table and close

enough to touch. But I

was terrified and could not make

the invisible wall between us

disappear. I could not tell you that

I want you more than a melody,

more than a breath; not for me, but for

your lovely soft blue, and for all

there is to know behind it.

The air hung, static,

screaming in my silence. I opened

my mouth to speak and felt

my lungs touch, deflated and dry.

I don’t think that you knew.

And now, as I gaze at the

vacant chair across from me,

its emptiness is smothering.

As Chopin’s melody rises,

pulsing strident to its climax,

I realize that this is the last crescendo

before its final cadence, and soon

I will sit aching in the silence.

And I am not ready

for it to end.


--Alicia (2010)