We Have No Use For It Anymore

We have no use for it anymore,”
your mother said as I stood on your doorstep.
“You can have it. It's what he would have wanted.”
 
In her eyes I could see the seas of the world.
Her hands quivered
as she surrendered your viola--your heart and spirit,
and what you drew every breath for--
the music that would flood your lungs and give you life.
 
So I drove faraway to our secret place,
the abandoned schoolhouse in the woods
on Pratt Lake, where maples trees and honeybees
sway with the wind and I am at peace.
 
I laid your case on a cast-iron desk,
and I unzipped it. It was like
collapsing the dam in my heart
and letting the reservoirs
flow for the first time since you passed;
I thought of us making bracelets out of cello strings
and cutting off the circulation in our hands with them too,
and how we laughed until we cried
in fourth hour orchestra and Mr. DeLille
never reprimanded us? No, I'll never forget.
 
It's rich mahogany like the hair in your eyes;
your bow fits my grip like your hand in mine.
The strings are still caked with rosin
as if you played just yesterday.
But I know better,
and bow to those strings.
I play a D major,
your favorite scale because it has two sharps,
“one for each of us,” you said.