‘Cello by Ramón C. Sunico

It is night again, and it’s never easy. I am alone in my room, reading poems from one of my favourite poets, wishing I had his book, wishing it wasn’t so hard to find. I am reading from an old journal where I have scribbled his poems, where I have written his verses for years, from copies borrowed from friends, from old college notes when I took that one poetry class that changed my life.

I am walking barefoot in my room, a poem in my hands, reading, smoking, thinking of a lover that isn’t there.

Cello
Ramón C. Sunico

You would not think
the way he carries it in
that he carries a thing:

the way he favors
his left hand (which touches
its strings) as if it were a wing

that touched God; the way
his knees cling to its sides
as if it were love. It is

his cross, to love
a mermaid whose hair
can sing, his cross

to bear, a wooden box,
half hourglass, half
hollowness restraining

resonant air, to know
what is not woman, not thing
but voice,

and, with the audience
mute as landscapes,
to let it scream.

My heart is a bruise.

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