BLACK TRANSISTOR

My great aunt gave me a black
transistor radio with tarnished gold knobs. I fiddled with it, spooned in soft
voices from the heavy, lisping tides of static.
I let it play quiet with candles burning while I lay in the bathtub and touched myself
for the first time to Barry Manilow.

They found her with music still playing low,
from the looming walnut wall console; a symphony station.
Face down in dark-stained roses of the carpet,
white lace doilies on polished tabletops still
hanging limp and dustless, windows shut.
I didn't want to play her radio after that, or hear the same song she might have heard
the music of the roses as she knelt down into them.