Her Voice

I looked up and saw him:

Fluorescent lights

shining

on the angles of his face,

sparrow-feather hair

glowing

against green metal lockers.

His farewell nod cut me

like a switchblade down my cheek

as I was left alone

in a blurred sea of strangers’ faces.

()

Sing for me, Céline.

Shatter these blank beige walls

with the fierce sweetness of your voice.

Let these linoleum tiles

burst into a riot of blood-red roses.

Shout out my pain

in the howling snowstorms of our country.

Whisper my lost hopes

like a withered November leaf.

You know how it feels

to be sliced open by love.

()

My own voice is thin and shaky,

a child’s whine in an empty corridor.

I clear out the debris of one more dream,

cranking the volume on my iPod.

He is gone.