Her pale blue eyes --
bright and clear despite
the white hair
and sagging wrinkles
framing them --
greet me, veiled behind
yellow and brown glasses.
I sit at the black baby grand,
squeezed in the corner
of a house too small,
orange lamp shade on one side,
Mrs. Miles in her wheelchair
on the other.
Her flowered skirt reaches
past her bent knees to reveal
swollen ankles above
brown orthopedic shoes.
The blue veins and
orange, red, purple flowers
stand out against the dimly lit
yellowish-brown shag carpet.
Posters from art exhibits,
concerts, dated before I was born,
clutter the walls,
colors blurring into the
dimness, while
stacks of sheet music and books
pile on the closed top
of the piano, covered with words
like Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn,
that I don’t know how
to pronounce,
but that must sound
like angel voices when
the tongue accents them.
With words like that
the music in those books
should be sweet -- like lullabies
lilting from Mom’s guitar --
Puff the Magic Dragon and
the Beatles --
pure and smooth unlike Dad’s
crackling records.
The gold letters of “Steinway”
stare at me from above the keyboard,
while Mrs. Miles’s fingers
tap the keys, echoing
a secret from those gold letters.
I look at my fingers,
short and skinny,
noticing the smoothness
and lines, scrapes
from the playground,
bitten fingernails
with cracked nail polish.
As she opens a yellow
book to place it in front of me,
a silver chain dangles from
her watchband which holds
a wad of tissues
against her wrist.
Her hands are soft
when they place mine
on the keys,
like her voice
as she says,
“Now you.”
