emsk

Tonight I am lonely and upset. I don’t have the words to frame my emotions, not yet, not that the story is mine to tell. I’ve always been a loner. Maybe I’ve mostly been alone. One way or another, I first learned to keep to myself, to keep myself in check, to walk through the world rather than in it.

Always, always, I have had the piano. I’ve played since before I knew what playing was, since before I was walking. I’m no genius, I have no especial talent, but there is something in my soul that knows what music is and cannot live without it.

And I come back to the piano, happy and sad, elated and for consolation, and my old friend is there. I watch my fingers in the reflection of the wood above the keys, and I reach to express the emotions I have no other way of expending. Amusement, ennui, pleasure, grief, insanity, rage; I play with my heart bleeding and until my fingers ache, and I let emotion storm and crash over me, and I stay there until I am calm. Tonight I do not have the words, but I don’t need them, not when I can pour out my heart and soul and rage into the piano and let her speak for me.

Tonight I can be lonely, but not alone.