God, where do I begin? Should I discuss the cold, hard wood beneath my steady fingers as they slowly glide from oak to ivory? Or should I comment upon the delicate ting of the overtones that line the sound that echoes from that undulating A-flat? I should not. No; I will not.

I should, however, consider the grace notes that flit and scurry from the way my fingers play the four bars of 7/8 time as footsteps rang down the hall. I should commemorate the piece I played when the door bars unlocked and he walked in. I should point out the last note I ever played on the piano was a low C-sharp; how grumbling and cruelly it mocked me as I was touched all over, as I was defiled by his dirty acuity as he watched me from the chair that sat four inches too near. As he scanned the sheet music in front of me and our eyes met in the warm, forgiving glisten of the piano’s varnish, I was brought to my knees as I sat so still on the bench.

As he reached across and turned the page, I stayed silently bowed before him, all the while playing Liszt’s “La Campanella in G-Sharp minor.” I could feel his cold, clammy visage gaze over my skin as his deep, muddled brown eyes peered into my very soul, turning it a deep, ruby red. I felt the shanty 6/8 disorder, rearrange into the prime 7/8 I so wanted, so needed. The sweet scent of “3 and 4, 3 and 4, 3 and 4…” drove me mad.

It drove me mad. So deeply within myself I drew that my own fingers began to unravel, untwine and disintegrate until nothing was left except one low D…D….D…D until I thought nothing else existed. Nothing else mattered.

Suddenly, an F. A clear, high, unyielding F that so wondrously filled the cavern that housed me and that odious soul. So righteous was I to feel that F ring that I neglected to perceive that it was not I who was playing that melodic F, but he. With each passing moment, the D minor waltz felt so lilting, so rhythmic that as we each played one part, I the low, he the high, I felt our spirits intertwine. Our psyches danced, waltzed 'round the cosmos, found the stars laughable, the moon agreeable, and the quasar a sight to see. So lost were we that the feeling of being found was and undiscovered whim, an unfounded megrim that passed as quickly as breath in the cold. But you know what? I think that’s just the way it is.