On Your Birthday I Dreamed...

It has to be 3 in the morning;
I hear the clock first.
Only the outside light came in.
City Light. Storm Light. 4th floor high.
Open windows in the summertime.

I follow your sound
by the wind pushed down the stretching hall,
ghosts of violets and cigarettes
drift from the papered walls
and the metal of the coming rain
leaking in the windows.

The piano is closed.
Cloth lays over the strings.
You play with your head pressed to the lid
like Beethoven,
an Austrian scowl.
Your hair spreads out, curling down
to the keys, tumbling
over the orange-lit ivory.

Muted, I watch you,
holding to the bluest of shadows.
I want to kiss your frowning lips
drink the music that pours like gin
from your dripping fingertips,
but the light you lie in
bubbles around you.
Still in the storm wind, nothing
can touch you,
outside or in.

I listen
to your heaving breath,
the covered strings
the creak of your body bent over the keys.
Held, a ripe fruit
in your mouth for a moment,
translucent and red as a pomagrante seed,
so much bursting tension
the strings thrum, and the sky
turns yellow-green.
The rain begins, and you bite into me.

The burden of thunder,
sharp change in pressure.
Blood on my tongue and your body slumps.
Bent back, dry fingers.
Your sleeping breath,
and eyes still closed.

I know Love,
the weight of a piano.