An Elegy to my Mother

Noise fills the silent room like a stranger that you didn’t know I needed,

It’s talking to me and no one else.

Every movement,

chord and rhythm

spoils a deep dark secret,

of my own, that I didn’t know I had.

We laugh and gossip,

learning each other's bones.

I become like

a broken record

or at least that’s what you tell me,

“all you ever do is sit and listen to that same drop

over and over and over again”

a woman beyond genre

I’ll admit

the noise consumes me

but it does not play me

how you did

It shows me courage and strength and

pain

and it does not leave when the

good song ends and a crappy song starts

how you do

A being so intimately close

to you

that you don’t think it can let you down

Until the Melody leaves when I need her most.

and only the beautiful,

sad sounds remain.