I often dream of endless skies
       shimmering black and gold,
       of artificial suns
       always out of reach.
By your command, I’d freely sing
       as your fingers danced across my strings,
       lifting my voice higher than a soprano,
       directing my every melody.
I remember your warmth
       as you cradled me on your shoulder,
       cherishing every calloused finger,
       priding the scarred skin under your jaw.
The sweet musk of our stage
       lingers like the caress of your touch,
       feverish and frantic along my neck
       but confident and sure in every movement.

This coffin of darkness
       saves me from age and wear,
       but the silence shatters me
       into mere fragments of what could have been.
Without your touch
       I am expertly crafted firewood,
       voiceless and paralyzed,
       a splinter in your soul.
Like an artifact of your life
       you preserved me
       and abandoned me,
       and I don’t know what to be without you.
You—who once loved me; you
       who searched for meaning beyond the songs; you
       whose hands grew rougher, tighter; you
       for whom the music had never been enough.

Are you happier now
       clutching books to your heart,
       scrawling words instead of notes
       onto carefully lined pages?

Do you hear my voice
       calling you back,
       begging you to remember me,
       to hold me once again?
Is it so impossible to think
       that you might return
       to the passion we once shared
       and relive those nights under the cold suns?
Or is my cry lost in the distance
       of time and space—

       nothing more than a flicker of memory
       in your dreams?