I.

Tell me 
You ask me if I’ve listened to 
Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2, 
and I tell you I haven’t. 
     You should, you say, so

tonight I let the ebbing tide
of strings with woodwinds
drown me with each inhale of
     a cadenza, washing out every
reaction, every tear I can afford to waste

and my fingers          clutch my arms 
as if I am trying to read the music from 
the goosebumps on my skin, but I am 
the shell of a mollusk that had abandoned its home;
there is nothing left behind dead skin.

I pause the night and will myself to forget. 

iii.

you read me like a painting,
observed all my chameleon colors
to find truth within my ingenuities; watched
landforms of acrylic facade peeling from canvas

and you told me about it all.
i breathed in your words like smoke,
chemical guilt that eroded my lungs
fueled by my envy, my [love],

the feeling of my heart swelling and shriveling
at once, Schrodinger's cat but it's my pride
in the box, my ego
     on the line
between you and me
following the outline of oblique motion:

prepared, suspended,
(un)     resolved.

vi7.

i existed in the glow-in-the-dark dots
stuck to my ceiling from when i tried
to carry the night sky 
          into my own bedroom. every fake star, 
their positions calculated, proportions measured,
weaved together to form the Big Dipper
     before i grew bored and left it 
          alone in the dark, 
a single lonely constellation in my sky.

and you: you conducted the night itself, drew 
the rhythm     of the moon and its stars
while i could not even complete your counterfeit. 
i don’t have the right to despise you for it—

you were too deserving of everything
to make me feel like i deserved anything.

i just kept looking at you, but never reached to hold.

iv.

you were my muse in the worst way,
my false god. every line

i threw on a page, i thought of you
over my shoulder: scrutinizing every word,
every beat, every face. you took the shape
of all the monstrous portraits 
i’d painted     in my head, fatally intricate
in the center of my subconscious.
    i let it occupy all of my memory,
     let it erase my will.
i bathed in hatred for your virtuosity 
and shame for my hatred
     yet at the same time, i ached to please you.

so i write for you.

I. 

I listen to the end 
of Rach 2          mvt 2
again, like you told me to 
six months ago. It traces 

the line of an emotion I can’t identify, 
one that unravels all my stitches 
into a mess of bare, fragile thread.
I like to think that it is you on the
          other end,
pulling my body apart on a single strand
     with your baton.

It’s an endless losing war, the tug between
conducter and pianist — a duet
of a one-way battle. I guess 
there’s always your stars to look up to. 
I promise          to watch you
from my piano bench.

The orchestra takes its final breath.