The key is to repeat the motions so often they no longer feel like a drill. I work the runs, slowly, and patiently, curling my body toward the keys until the notes have lost their surprise. Of all the things I have tricked my body into accepting, this one thing is of my own making. Soon the mind forgets.
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When I reached the top of the second page, she made a slight sound in her throat, a clearing. At the last stanza on the second page, she quietly stood and turned the page, and the hairs rose on my arm. She leaned closer, and I adjusted my position so that she could join me. Measure by measure, rise and fall, she breathed with me.
As the final notes wound down, she placed her hand on top of mine. She raised my hand to her mouth, pressed her lips against the skin. I turned her hand over and found the soft place on her wrist, found her eyes, pulled her to my lips and screamed.
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I pace the floors at two and three, a ghost in my own home. If I step here, the boards will creak – and there, someone has placed a chair where there should be nothing. But if I kneel, if I press my tongue to the dark wood and lay myself inside the dust, I can pour myself through the cracks and find me again.
The second sleep is thick, full of repeated words and winding places. I wake in pieces, silver light at the edges of the windows. A dull heaviness behind my knees. When I kick at the blankets, my hand settles inside a round spot the temperature of baked bread. It’s back.
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