Empty House Etude

If you are alone at least
there’s a piano humming between walls,
or the mirage of music
tossed-up by your memory
like a black root, a dahlia
for that second shadow.
Is it an angel? Or only your conscience
with its dark wings dipped in amber,
a retroactive shine?
Let the humming mistake itself
for the voice of something living.
Let it sprout two legs
and a penchant for broken doors.
Let it haunt some other secret
you’ve been hiding in the night.
We still have our dusky voids.
It’s not all fossil-glare
and museum admission.
No one’s curating
your descent.
Those eighty-eight keys
played by silence
in your empty house
are the sound the moon makes
creaking towards you
on its zodiacal hinge.