Cello Once Hit by a Train

after Charles Brooks


imagine a room
of rich brown wood
scrolled f-holes for windows
conducting light and sound
walls like hourglass hips
curved maple ribcage
polished to a high gloss
an interior world of planking
shattered and reshaped
by skillful hands
a body restored to wholeness
dedicated to one art
a series of exquisite notes
those perfect throaty fifths
the breathless glissandi
a box of quivering music
singing your life so beautifully
that you can’t even tell
where it once hurt

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Nylah Lyman’s first collection of poetry, Frail Union, was published by Encircle Publications in 2021. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Hunger Mountain, the minnesota review, and other journals. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program.