This poem is an homage to Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings, Op. 11."

Have you ever listened to a piece of classical music,

Imagined the violins dancing with the cellos,

The cellos lifting the violins in the air,

Twirling like it was Cinderella's first dance,

So beautiful a trance it hushes every sound in the world to silence.

I won't apologize.

I've listened to a piece of classical music,

More than one, more than once,

And have imagined the violins dancing with the cellos.

There's something about Slow

That you were never able to do for me.

There's something about Quiet

That you were never able to understand.

There's something about left and right, the bass and the treble,

Harmonies and dissonances, elations and undulations —

Intertwining, transferring, lifting to the point where oxygen doesn't

Exist —

That you never tried to see for me.

I've fallen in love with more than one, more than once,

In ways you'd never be able to fathom.

A kind of love like two hands fitting into each other's grasps like it

Was molded for one another. A kind of love

That makes your lungs full. A kind of love

That makes you hold on and be held onto with a stability backed

By a single breath that somehow never runs out and yet

You still trust it.

You laugh because you don't understand, not brave enough to try,

Not serious enough to try, not vulnerable enough to try.

Take your hypermasculinity, your inability

To try, and fall in love with someone else. Fall in love

With more than one, more than once,

Because I have so, too.

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