• Vol. 05
  • Chapter 11
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Cadence

As though the strings
are silver strands
of angel hair,
she gently plucks,
each note a ghostly droplet,
trickling waterfalls.
She swallows
flawless ripples
of melodious air
and as the music
seeps its sadness,
her heart weeps.
Each trill
and transient note
are born,
and die,
the flats and sharps
embalming her in spell.
The pipe is sweeter
than a nightingale,
the lilt
a dreamy drift
to blissful rest.

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Cadence

But as she sculpts
the silence
into filigree,
ephemeral
as an imprint of the light,
she shivers
at the lurking naked void,
blacker than black,
whiter than white.
Her fingers crawl
towards the calling coda
and she gulps for life
as minor keys weigh heavy
and she gasps
as passion
mutates to propulsion.
At the end,
she draws in blasts
of shallow emptiness,
tastes lifelessness,
unseasoned,
on her palate.
Confined by stillness,
she acknowledges the bar-line
and in a stream
exhales existence
in finale.

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