» Poetry

Your Name in F# Major

A flamingo of a man in a pink-blush tux

plunked a single piano key repeatedly

for nearly an hour.

By the end of the evening

I heard such gorgeous silence

and sobbed. My mind

was in brambles and the notes he pecked

all hatched like eggs at once.

Every flap, every cheep

became your name and I became

a mockingbird. I said your name

as if I were your brother and just caught

you snooping in my desk

for the cigarettes I kept hidden.

Then I said your name

with the reverence of a child

learning his mother existed

as before-mother for the first time,

reconciling one identity with another.

Now I say it like we just met,

introduced by a mutual friend

we later admit we never liked.

I’m trying to commit

the syllables to memory

without making it obvious. Hi,

it’s nice to meet you. It’s nice

to see you again. Hi. It’s so nice. Your name.

I say it so often it loses meaning

the way cotton candy dissolves

so humbly and quickly

into a glass of water but the water

is delightfully altered, and I don’t remember

your face anymore

but you’re in the swirl,

and I drink and drink and

stay, please, with me, I am chapped,

chirping, I’m spun, oh sugar, oh

sweet, your

name, oh your name, your

sweet, invisible name.