in D.

These fingers once danced across alabaster keys. Not real alabaster keys, but we paid good money buying the piano off relatives; I still remember the day it moved into our living room. Now I align sheet music like literature, try to decipher its message. It is no use, I am illiterate. But leaving the strange symbols in my vision long enough, ancient steps awake in those fingers again; I play by memory, it's still there.

15 years and how lost I was, tumbling through the wilderness of what Life had amounted to, I had only those alabaster keys to hold on to, and I held for dear life. How every day was an endless beating against strips of white and black, angry violence and soft caresses to make sense of a world that did not. 30 years now and all I have to show for them is a loss of the melody, resignation to the jungle.

The night grew long, the drinks grew so many. Strangers were made friends in the soft trickle of rain; this is a Monday night, this is the city on its best behavior. My cheeks flushed with gratitude over the people that fill my days. But the song is not the same. Words lost can not be compensated with harmonies and alabaster. My fingers run along impatient question marks.

I cannot answer them.