Frank Mills

I was only interested in learning to play one song on the piano, Music Box Dancer by Frank Mills, the unwitting object of my girlhood fantasies…

The vase is full of mould
thick, white
coating the thorny stems
blood-dark heads droop—
I hadn’t learned yet
about drying flowers upside-down
and wouldn’t have cared
the vase and the roses
an inseparable package
lifted from the glistening black pool
of his piano
and given to me
glowing in the front row
gold lamé vest ablaze
with the kind of fire only
a 12-year-old girl can hold
for a man
three times her age.