Poem 21: Fade

Fade

She can't move the bow steadily across the violin strings.
Not because her black dress isn't really warm enough
for this autumn day. Not because the hymns she plays
seem scarcely to penetrate the thick silence with thinned
out sound. She is shorter than the rest so all she saw
of her grandfather was a waxy nose poking out
above the sides of the coffin and now she can't look
at her mother's face. She does not want to see tears
and be reminded she is still an outsider to this grief.