"Garage Band of Survivors"

All I Could Hear Was the Harmony
after the feedback fades

The basement always smelled like dust and secrets,
old amps humming even when they were off.
Your mother’s voice — a soprano lost in static,
your father — a snare drum too quick to snap.

We tuned ourselves around them,
played softer when he drank,
louder when she cried.
You learned to strum apology in D minor,
I kept time tapping lies on the floor.

Cousins came with out-of-key laughter,
uncles brought distortion pedals of opinion,
aunties kept rhythm with casseroles and guilt.
No one rehearsed, but we all knew the parts.

I remember you soloing grief under the stairs,
the way you clutched silence like a microphone.
Someone should’ve turned down the reverb
on the things we weren’t allowed to say.

We were a garage band of survivors,
no gigs, just family dinners.
No lyrics, just coded glances.
And when the final chorus came —
when they divorced, or died, or just stopped showing up —
no one knew if we were better off unplugged.

Still, sometimes I hear a riff in a dream,
something half-remembered from the bridge,
and I wonder if you ever finished the song
we started in between the screaming.