i sat down to play the piano with everyone home for the first time since she died
two at the kitchen table working out fractions, one disappearing to his bedroom, one in the back studio teaching someone, trumpet i think, and me, back at the keys
but not playing two of the regulars, my hands kept reaching for everything
but those particular two. i opened the red hymnal to my trusty paper-clipped spot
faltered on the first chord change, unusual, moved slower, took a deep breath, let the sound seep
into each finger tip as one brushed by, "Oh, that's my favorite" he declared, and began describing the harmonic shifts to the two doing fractions, who then shushed him to help me keep focusing on those harmonic shifts, which i was in fact, at that very moment, fucking up.

it was a birthday dinner day and three of us were in the kitchen with green olives, and one
was at the piano, improvising on this tune which afterward i couldn't chase out of my morning teacup until one day weeks later i opened the book and found the paperclip and let myself stammer through it each morning, remembering the afternoon of his re-harmonization, when something was happening between human and piano, and two of us softly hummed along, and waited, all in its own time, over the chicken and spice, while the third ran off again somewhere to do something of his own design

we listened to the first birthday song written many years ago, and i sat quietly,
wondering about the birthday song i had written, and wondering, about the music
that was so quietly and firmly taking over so much of me, that all i could be filled
with in the meantime in my dining room chair was awe and caramel and hope and tears