I sit outside the piano-room door
and listen to you sing
because it makes me want to be alive.

I imagine myself dancing in the center
of a pearl-white key,
waltzing backward toward the string
that ties song to sound.

You lift a finger
and pause to breathe
and I fall a thousand feet
into the space between silence and noise.

If only your voice were never-ending,
then perhaps I’d fall more softly
or not at all.