overwhelmind

Made of wire, he’s just a frame. He plays piano like it’s a game. Music moves him, you know. It’s not so hard to see. I fall into his hands like a fish reaching for the bait. It’s true that I can’t feel my skin here.

Scattered into a million pieces, the music seeps between the keys. Individual notes fall on me like documentaries: memoirs of the soul I have yet to lawfully meet. I wish I could record this somehow. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but it’s not. It’s just interpretation. It’s elucidation due to exposure in the dark. Picture this.

Obviously he’s a minimalist.

My tongue gets stuck on the verbs; I slur my words and I can’t hear you at all. Where did you go and what did you do and will you be my friend or is this really the end?

I get lost in the ivory. I touch my mouth, but isn’t that a signal? An indication that you want to be kissed? …I would kiss you. I would kiss this music. I would hold on to this epiphany and you would be the epitome of appeal.

I’ve gotten sunburned three days in a row, and my face feels like the football we threw in the living room the weekend I came up to visit. You, on the other hand, are flawless. Or so you appear in your music.

I can’t smile. I have too many freckles, or something. Because it feels good. Like your oeuvre. Really. Cause I just want to do it– I don’t want to talk about it. Thinking too hard will hurt your head, but so will the alcohol you are so very fond of. Regardless, I want to hold your hands.

It hurts to breathe sometimes. I don’t know if that is really your fault or if I’m just besieged by the synchronization of quintessence.

So many words. Can you wrap your head around it? It’s okay if you can’t. Just admit. Apologize- pull out your eyes.

I don’t even mind when you lie. You are too prideful, you know. You really are. You don’t know when to stop, and you don’t know when to go. And me? I just can’t let.

It’s the snake-in-the-grass symptom. And I am not the snake.

Back to the music.

I catch you staring at me and stare right back, but I always lose this game. I wrote you a poem while I thought of it:

A sudden thought enters my mind unbidden,
And it makes me laugh silently.

I read you the way I read music-
Painstakingly slow
And even then incorrectly.

I cannot think of enough ways to subsist. I cannot follow the things you insinuate, and I cannot bear to replicate.

If you told me flat out, I would believe you. If you crawled from the corners, if you renounced your life of self-interest, I would believe you. But trying to understand you in the current state of affairs is fairly impossible. I won’t pressure you, but I won’t fail you. And if you want me to, I will hold the sheets and turn the pages for you. All you have to do is nod, cause counting in my head gets monotonous, and the sound that trickles in is like a kiss after a date.

I could let you in, but you could be hazardous to my health. I haven’t really decided about you. I want to eat the popcorn from the ceiling. I want to scrape the rain from the sides of the house and give it to you for Christmas. I want to fall into this so hard and so fast you leave me gasping for breath. But I’m still a bit unsteady from the last descent into your lair.

Music hits me in waves. Forces my heart to follow its course, forces my hands to reach, forces my eyes to wander in wonder.

You sing but not to me. I am but a listener, a spectator, a witness to your triumph. I want to twirl in the sound.

The summer I turned five, my mom bought popsicles that stained my mouth and shirt red. I skipped through the grass and danced with the spinning sprinklers. I can still see the dew on my eyelashes.

It’s the same feeling. You have the same draw, and I plunge into the music before I say another word.

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