Flying

She’s still hanging there... the house has been run down for years, yet she still hangs there. The old piano we used to love, sits against a rotting wall, adjacent to the room…. I stand there, looking at the moldy, wooden bench; memories we shared there, songs we sang there, quiet nights we cried there…. We didn’t cry enough…. I gently step towards the once beloved bench, my feet squishing the sickly green ground beneath them, almost grasping my shoes, as if it meant to never let me go after each step…. I wipe the seat off gingerly, and slowly pull it across the soft and wet floor. Muffled as it slides atop the aged wooden boards, I stop about a foot away from the pedals, take a step around and in front of it, my other leg follows, and I slowly bend to take a seat. As I do so, I notice a small fly has found itself stuck in a puddle of water, twitching and seizing, unable to free itself… I thought about helping it... or leaving it to drown... but instead, I calmly crouched down, and with my right index finger gently pushed it, like a button. Like a light, it’s life, gone from this earth… I then went to my knees and began to sob, wishing I had saved it, it had more time I could have helped it but instead I took the easy way out I thought I did it a favor but she just couldn’t see that I had no choice….. Suddenly I’m staring at my hands. They’re drenched with blood, dripping onto the floor, my tears dropping into my hands. The fly is gone.

I stand up, not bothering to wipe the blood from my hands or the tears from my face, and I sit at the piano, and begin slowly playing a song that I had written for her, when time was still with us. A song saying sorry, for all the times I had already said sorry. I played this song and she smiled, sat with me, and told me I had nothing to be sorry for. I liked that she said that, made me feel like not so much of a monster. Now I sing this song not for her, but to her, from the other room with only an old, decaying wall in between us….

“I can’t do this face to face... but I’ll admit that I’m afraid… let these moments go to waste… excuse me for my plastic taste”

The piano keys smothered in dirty water, tears, and blood. The sound of the off pitch piano. My broken, shattered voice whispering my last secrets into the notes I struck. It all came rushing back in a symphony of emotions, in an instant I was pushed away from the piano, landing forcefully onto my back. I opened my eyes, and I was standing in the room where she had been left to rot…. I began to rot.

I wish I had listened more closely.

I wish my tears could run out.

I wish I had not killed that poor fly.

I wish I could feel like I was flying too.