Shades and swathes of sound; The shape of music,
felt not through ear, but through throat and quivering earth.
Felt in winters spent pulling apart a cello to heat a home,
warmth filling the space. Or in adding horsehair, with bridges
splintered, and charred fingertips brushing over keys.
With grounded ears I listen for this acoustic pyre,
but the burning only sounds itself in diminuendo — its timbre
like a film of memory. Am I meant to be hearing this?
Am I meant to bear witness to this legerdemain bowing —
this moving from palm to palm like searching for desert shade?
I replay this passage in retrograde, watching you build a house
to extinguish the fire. You are pulling kindling from the flames and
constructing a perfect home with it. The walls are made with violins
and the floors with tightened skins. When the door opens and you come in,
the room is full with music again. When it closes, the house folds in on itself.
There are four cameras to capture every angle, and four ears to hear
the silence to which sound is anchored — it is felt only through its hum.