Villanelle: The Sounds of Emptiness

She’s gone visiting…to see her sister—     
Strong scents of her presence are everywhere, 
The house is filled with her passing whispers. 

I walk through the rooms like a lost drifter, 
My lonely heart plunged into black despair, 
She’s gone visiting—to see her sister.   

Outside, her meowing cat won’t enter—  
 Inside, cat waits with patience by her chair… 
The house is filled with her passing whispers. 

Each tiny sound makes my heart beat faster—     

Without her here the house seems cold and bare—  

She’s gone visiting—to see her sister.  

I switch on lights to make the house brighter   
then sit alone—at the four walls I stare…

The house is filled with her passing whispers.

I have become as mad as Mad Hatter 
Asking the Queen for tea with the March Hare!  
She’s gone visiting…to see her sister— 
The house is filled with her passing whispers. 

The villanelle has no established meter, although most 19th-century villanelles have used trimeter or  tetrameter and most 20th-century villanelles have used pentameter. The essence of the fixed modern form is its distinctive pattern of rhyme and repetition. The rhyme-and-refrain pattern of the villanelle can be schematized as A¹bA² abA¹ abA² abA¹ abA² abA¹A² where letters ("a" and "b") indicate the two rhyme sounds, upper case indicates a refrain ("A"), and superscript numerals (¹ and ²) indicate Refrain 1 and Refrain 2  (Wikipedia).