Bubble

Another Friday night phone call, and my roommate must make her way over the water for a funeral again. I should be just as distraught as last time, but I don't have it in me, she says before she goes, I am numb.

And so it is that a Sunday afternoon finds the apartment on Morton Street empty, quiet. I wrap myself in soft cotton sheets and read hundreds of novel pages without coming up for air. When the room finally gets too quiet, the freedom apparent, my fingers and lungs grow impatient and I uncover the piano.

With every flight over the keys, my body softens. With every sad sweet song of love and loss and longing, my soul unravels, dares to look at itself honestly. It is not long before tears form in my spine and the thick skin that separates them from their physical manifestations on my cheeks begins to thin out.

Suddenly I am 15 and living in that house in the dark country, trying desperately to fill the void with music because what else would I do with my time when I had lost my home and myself across the sea. I would sit at that piano for hours, never tiring, so intertwined with the song that I could forget reality completely and be one with vibrations.

But there was always something to fix, I learned quickly. Voices nearby would point out mistakes, correct artistic freedom to fit classical training. By the time my voice teacher on the other side of the woods tried to encourage a little off-beat singing, it was too late and I had no spontaneity left in me. In the early afternoons, my livingroom would reel from arias and soul, but by evening, they would retreat to quiet platitudes.

It doesn't take a psych degree to see why I cannot sing in front of people. It takes no genius to map out the fear or the hurt. I was one with the music, and if the music was flawed, then so was I.

Is it then any wonder why I keep my words mostly to myself? Stack passworded manuscripts in secret folders and save them from the world's scrutiny?

My skin is thick. But my heart beats so softly within.