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)