In paradisum
deducant te Angeli

our young voices
sang out sweetly
sounding
like the angels
we invoked

"May the Angels lead you to paradise"

my heart cracked
a little more each time

it was supposed to be an honor
to sing the funeral mass
but amidst sad and lovely music
I heard the crying
felt the grief

from the choir loft you could hear them
sobbing down below
as the priest's solemn chanting
echoed all around

you could see the casket
near the altar
adorned in purple
draped in black

you could smell
the burning candles,
the incense
and the flowers

once when I heard a child cry
it was more than I could take
my tears flowed with the mourners
I was choked
and couldn't sing

all the pain I could imagine,
all anguish
and despair
crept in and
fully broke

what had been merely cracks

from then I never found the music
lovely

so much more than sad
it was bitter and disturbing

to a young
impressionable
mind

Come closer to my bedside children
for the final hour draws near
I have longed for this adventure
there is no time for fear

I have run my course
  quite a run it was
I have worn my welcome here
so bid me farewell and smile for me
let's not shed a tear

I've loved and lost
I've battled rough seas
my soul forever true
and if nothing else
I've been paid in full
with a gift
the 3 of you

so I'll leave you now
with this final word
before my thoughts digress
I'm not dying, my children
I'm just moving
to no particular address

Why can’t anyone else hear the music?
The sound so alluring and entrancing.
It guides my every step in this melancholy world.
It spins around me and in me like the quiet kiss of a an Autumnal breeze.

The colors are sounds, every note a changing mood lifting my spirit with each new song.
Each new aria swelling and deluging my soul.
This feeling of devastating peace I cannot describe nor live without.

So why can’t you hear it?
Why can’t you feel it?
It’s so emphatic so intrusive and belligerent  yet here I stand in the midst of this crescendoing chorus, ears ringing with this music but nobody dances.

And no amount of sonder can take this isolating feeling away.
This panging loneliness that cradles me.
Why am I the only one?
Why can’t you carry this sustaining chord along side me?

I though I saw you hear it once.
You blinked those dismal eyes at me and in them I saw you.
They sparkled and opened up with the wonder of a child.
Your head turned to the sound and your face softened to a visage I once knew.
But soon they we’re shut.
Clamped down and locked, choosing to be blind and deaf to the song.
Turning away in shame and anger.

Oh how ignorant you are, choosing to turn away from this beautiful epiphany that could set you free.
How could you choose this life of apathy and abhorrence?
Why do you turn your face from me?
Is my music not enough?

Here I’ll wait and dance.
Spinning slowly to the sounds of my spirit.
Singing along with my own song until the day you sing it with me.