Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor

When the world grows heavy,
I sit at the bench
and let my fingers speak.

The first note wraps around my heart,
and something within me unfurls.

Weight slips from my shoulders,
falls through the cracks
between black and white.

The keys don’t ask
what I’m carrying.
They just take it.
Hold it.
Echo it back
like an old friend.

Sound waves gather around me,
forming shapes that tell
my story.

I close my eyes,
let the tears come,
and there is only
chord,
melody,
counterpoint.

Music holding me together
when nothing else can.


---

Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 in C minor, Op. 111 was his final piano sonata – a work of fierce intensity and transcendent calm. The first movement storms with weight and struggle; the second, a theme and variations marked "Arietta," unfolds with lyricism and profound stillness. In it, melody, harmony, and counterpoint become a conversation between suffering and release. It's one of my favorite pieces to play, and the second movement always makes me cry.

 

Survivor’s Guilt

Why am I still here?

The question wakes with me.

I was there too,
long ago.
A dark room.
A locked door.
Hands that weren’t supposed to hurt.

But through the cracks,
like a weed or a miracle,
somehow I grew.

Now I walk among ghosts.
Friends lost to needles,
or bottles,
or bullets,
and their own exhausted hearts.

I carry their stories with me,
not because I earned my escape,
but because I didn't.

Some nights, the air tastes like guilt.
It whispers:
Why not you?

There is no answer.
Only the quiet ache
of living
when they could not.

--

https://beckypoems.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-circle.html

We lost one today. Another young life cut short. I didn't know her well, but I know her pain all too well. 

 

Shadows in the Mirror

It's not the memory
that hurts the most.
It's the way
I still blame myself
for surviving it.

I shrink in mirrors,
hide from a face, a body
that never feels
safe to own.

I tell people I'm fine,
a lie I’ve practiced
until it sounds
almost true.

They smile,
and I wonder
what they'd think
if they knew
what was done to me.

And how much of me
still feels ruined.

 

Fire

I remember your hand.
How it moved
like it had a right
to anything it touched.

You smiled,
called it a game.
And I was so young,
I thought not screaming
was some kind of strength.

Everyone loved you.
You fooled them all.
You laughed too loud,
hugged too long,
said things
that didn't sound like warnings
until later.
So much later.

I didn't know I wasn't safe
in my own home.
My own skin.
My own bed.

Now, when I say your name —
and yes, I still say it —
I say it with fire in my throat.
I spit it back at you
like a curse.

I am not yours.

I never was.
You took nothing
I did not take back
with blood,
with grief,
with the years
you don't get to have.

You thought the little girl
would stay quiet and small.

But she grew up.
She walks ahead of you now,
broken, yes,
but unashamed.

And when she looks back at you,

her eyes
burn.

 

Symphony #9

Not grief, really.

But something like standing
in the doorway after
everyone has gone home.

The room still warm
with their laughter,
chairs askew,
glasses of wine
half empty on the table.

You listen,
not for music,
but for what it leaves behind.

A kind of silence
that presses gently
on your ribs,
reminding you
that you're alive,
and won’t be
forever.

 

After the Crying

Mom didn't say much on the way.
I think she was just trying
not to cry.

The lady at the police station
asked too many questions,
but she had a voice like a lullaby,
and held my hand when the tears wouldn't stop.

Her office smelled like flowers
and lemon wipes.
Everything looked clean.
I still felt dirty.

Words like
forcible,
coercion,
age-of-consent
were thrown around.
I didn't know
what they meant.

They gave me a cup to pee in.
Said it was just a test—
just in case.
I didn't know what it was for.
I do now.

A nurse told me I was brave,
while they poked and prodded
in places I don't talk about.
I didn't feel brave.
They said it was for "evidence,"
like my body was a crime scene
wrapped in yellow tape.
I just wanted it to be over.

When we got home,
my room looked exactly the same—
stuffed bear on the bed,
stickers on the mirror,
Taylor Swift posters on the wall.
But I didn't know how to be
that girl anymore.

So I just curled up under my covers
and cried
and waited
to feel
like me
again.

I'm still waiting.