My Muse

You are a camellia potted on a Steinway

basking in my nocturnes.

To baptize you is to

ruin my vintage black lacquer.

Even still, I love you when your falling leaves 

interrupt my ballades.

Your water damage bends my A flats to Gs,

but when you carve uneven patches into my hi-shine finish

the reminder of you in distorted reflections 

makes my white keys gleam.

You are a well loved music book,

but you are pianissimo, cycling through muffled songbirds 

writing to me.

And when your sweet incantation 

dances atop coffee stained pages,

it reads a silent waltz.

You are a heart shaped rosary decorating my

upright’s body—

but rosaries want soundless symphonies, not sonatas.