Vocalise

Rachmaninoff could not know

The weight of what he'd done

When he wove

C sharp minor, dissonant.

Three chords repeated soft,

Before a vast

Chromatic descent.

Cluster chords assail as dark.

He bloomed a voice above it.

Oh, how a melody without words

Can speak.

Oh, how this ache grows as a vine,

Twisted tendril of sound

Out of my mouth.

Out from seat of stomach,

Chest heavy, and heart lead,

Through throat wrought and jaw dropped.

Head resting back, I am lost

In the ecstatic ache.

All things sad and lovely,

All unknown, leave my body on air

Until I am hollow again:

An absence I often have not found.

Catharsis is a million filaments of sound.

It's over,

As quickly as it began.

--Alicia (2011)

One of the weirdest Postsecrets I've seen...

"Whenever I finish a good book, I eat the last page."

Huh.

Absence

We coast through hills, rolling green

and blanketed in gossamer web

of liquid sunlight's diamond drips.

They glimmer on grass and windows.

The day sings while my heart

keeps its silence. The sky sits,

changing easel of orange

and gold on blue.

Traces of pink tufts

and a single bird

slice the horizon:

dark outlines over

illumined backdrop,

changing infinite.

To my right, the sun pants low,

recedes to day's end

as earth rotates away.

The car turns left with the road.

I am turned, am carried

off into dusk's gray.

One glance back

at the dying sun.

Unblinking, I soak in last light.

When I face forward, it's gone.

We drive east into night.

Still, I keep with me dark

spots in my eyes

from staring too long at the light.

When I blink,

they spark red and white.

My eyes open,

they blot spots out of view.

I carry the sun with me

as patches of dark in my eyes.

--Alicia (2011)