Rewritten

It was not her too-long pauses,

her anemic crumbling crescendos,

or even the last languid notes of her requiem.

I could not find it in the cadence

beneath her breast,

nor the adagio of her lungs.

I knew my harmonies;

knew every melodic tendon

raised beneath her pallid epidermis.

And then I passed the coda.

Dissonance and a tremolo.

I had been rewritten;

Through-composed.