Cello Song

I’m on a dwarf planet, in a hive of sound and gravity,
the lush architecture of a cello, strings rustling softly
against the stars, thick with sixteenth notes, sweet

honey of bees, and I’ve freed myself from the real world,
the boys I’ve loved are comets flashing by, bursting
into my memory, disappearing into orbits so far

I can barely see, but then I’m whiplashed by a cloud
of deceptive chords, strung along by a boy who never
loved me back. Take me, I want to break into shards
of varnished maple, I want to be an exploding cello, my love

too large for its chamber. I want the strings to fly off
the fingerboard, the fingerboard to break off the neck,
the neck to spin off the body, a love unheard of,
a love that hurts to be heard.

Reuben Gelley Newman (he/him) is a writer, musician, and library worker based in Brooklyn, NY. His poems have appeared in diode, The Fairy Tale Review, The Journal, Alien Magazine, Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. A Content Editor for The Adroit Journal and a Co-Editor for Couplet Poetry, he’s on Instagram and Twitter @joustingsnail.