Coda in Firelight

We watch the piano burn

in a field that used to be

a place for summer things—

picnics, bad kisses,

half-finished songs.

Now the night is a black stage,

and the flames do all the playing.

They climb the cracked varnish,

lick the yellowed keys,

turn every chord we never learned

into smoke.

Hammers fall one by one,

small collapses in the heart of it,

like apologies we meant to make

and never did.

The strings snap, bright and bitter,

a last ragged music

only the fire can read.

I think of the way

your hands used to move here—

hesitant, hopeful,

searching for a melody

big enough to hold us both.

We never found it.

Instead we found endings:

first in your eyes,

then in your voice,

and finally in this idea

to set the whole instrument alight,

as if we could burn

our unfinished song.

Embers drop like spent notes

into the dark grass.

The heat on our faces fades

to a thin, remembering warmth.

Soon there will be only a carcass

of warped metal and ash,

a hollow where the sound once lived.

When the last flame gutters out,

the night does not applaud.

It simply takes the silence back,

tucks it around what’s left of us,

and waits to see

what we will do now

with these empty, cooling hands.