Still Not Here
I hear the old house creak and I think maybe it's my lover come back to me, but it's been years, years that I haven't bothered to count because they have no meaning without her. I lift my head off the piano and wonder how much time has passed since I laid my head there. I blink slowly as tears begin to stream down my face. I thought I heard her. I thought I caught the smell of her perfume and the sound of her laughter.
The tears fall faster, she's not there. I pound the keyboard with my fist, she's not here. I stretch my fingers out over the keyboard and begin to hit a few keys. I slowly begin to play faster, come complexly. I begin to play a piece, an expression of life and love and sadness and death and grief and loneliness, the crushing, despairing loneliness! The tears blur my vision, but it doesn't matter. My fingers know where to go and what to do.
It builds; I scream a wail of anguish and suffering. The music stops abruptly, ending on the wrong notes, and I collapse on my piano, weeping. I see her face in the mirror, so I throw it across the room in a fit anger, screaming. I collapse back onto the piano.
How long has it been? How long since she died? I died too that day with her. It seems like yesterday, but it has been years. I can still see the tombstone, sitting on the crest of a hill. I can still see the coffin being lowered into the ground. I can still see the words on the gravestone, Dearly Loved, b. April 3, 1850, d. October 3, 1876. Over one hundred years ago. The thought seems foreign to me, as if time means nothing anymore, and I gaze at my hands, pale and transparent.
"Where is she! Where is my love!" I fall back onto the piano and lay there until the sound dies away. How long have I been laying there? Months, perhaps. Maybe years.
And my love is still not here.
The tears fall faster, she's not there. I pound the keyboard with my fist, she's not here. I stretch my fingers out over the keyboard and begin to hit a few keys. I slowly begin to play faster, come complexly. I begin to play a piece, an expression of life and love and sadness and death and grief and loneliness, the crushing, despairing loneliness! The tears blur my vision, but it doesn't matter. My fingers know where to go and what to do.
It builds; I scream a wail of anguish and suffering. The music stops abruptly, ending on the wrong notes, and I collapse on my piano, weeping. I see her face in the mirror, so I throw it across the room in a fit anger, screaming. I collapse back onto the piano.
How long has it been? How long since she died? I died too that day with her. It seems like yesterday, but it has been years. I can still see the tombstone, sitting on the crest of a hill. I can still see the coffin being lowered into the ground. I can still see the words on the gravestone, Dearly Loved, b. April 3, 1850, d. October 3, 1876. Over one hundred years ago. The thought seems foreign to me, as if time means nothing anymore, and I gaze at my hands, pale and transparent.
"Where is she! Where is my love!" I fall back onto the piano and lay there until the sound dies away. How long have I been laying there? Months, perhaps. Maybe years.
And my love is still not here.