for an actress i miss on wednesday nights

...play on.
          --Twelfth Night, Act 1, scene 1, 1


you,
sleeping here after the night becomes drunk
on rhapsodies wrung from tuneless keys,
on improvisations conjured up from cello strings, 
the richest kinds of wordless songs--


you,
breathing a soft berceuse,
warming my right side,
sleeping late under my lullabied blankets
while morning hangs over itself,
quiet and thin--


tomorrow, i will walk down stairs and find limp blooms bending in a crystal vase


i will reel at that absent space 
where you would have been
had other musics and other nights not called