It’s easy to get lost in those sostenuto passages,
running out of breath,
unable to sustain the long legato line
of trills, crescendos and decrescendos,
with enough lung power left over to inhale
and get ready for the next musical phrase.
She loved to sing: high school chorale,
church choirs, community choruses.
She knew Vivaldi’s Gloria frontwards
and backwards, performed it a multitude of times,
relishing the Latin on her tongue.
Now here she was, listening to her Vivaldi LP.
She had spent her whole life practicing music
and learned to travel light. No ties to speak of:
no husband to bother with or children to mourn
or fight over, no indoor pets to board when she is away,
no nosy neighbors, just what she had in the apartment
and a storage unit; just this rug she bought in Jaipur
that she was lying on now.
This constellation of circumstances –
of doxologies, diminutions and rites,
as she gasps for breath, unable to reach the phone.
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