I can only play two songs.
The song of my brain and the song of my heart.
The song of my brain is played by hundreds of students who come and go.
Some are happy, some are bored.
One boy with curly hair comes in every Monday.
He slams his book on my book stand.
He groans when the teacher asks him to play.
He jabs at my keys with every note.
It hurts, but I have to keep playing.
One girl with pigtails always comes in with a smile.
She tickles my keys as her tiny, gentle fingers try and hit each note.
I am always happy to see her.
She only comes for a year.
When all the students leave for the day, and my owner sits down and touches her fingers to my keys,
I play the most beautiful song.
Made of pure happiness and serenity.
But then one day something is wrong.
I don't see my owner anymore.
I stay in the same spot for 18 years.
Not a single person has played me.
One day, I am put in an auction.
A rich woman wearing designer sunglasses bought me.
I am moved into her house the next day,
Hopeful and excited that maybe someone in this house will want to play me.
It turns out I was just for show.
I sat there, idle for years and years.
People passed by, saying how beautiful I was.
The only time I spoke was when the housekeeper dusted my keys,
or when the cat scampered across me.
When the rich woman died,
Her children, all adults now, went around the house, deciding which things were theirs.
I sat there watching,
Praying that one of them would take me somewhere where I could finally be played.
One of her children came over,
Pressed hard on my keys,
And I made an ugly sound.
I'd never heard myself make that sound before.
The sound of sorrow, neglect, and loneliness.
The children looked at each other with a look of disgust,
And the next day I was sent to a horrible place.
I was thrown into a pile of garbage.
Completely surrounded with trash and other unwanted items.
I will never speak again.
I can only play two songs.
The song of my brain,
that I was made to play.
And the song of my heart,
a beautiful lullaby, turned into an ugly tragedy.
Hey! This was a quietly insightful poem from the piano's perspective. It leaves so much room for questions about the people's lives that we never get to know. Fascinating. I stumbled over the idea of a piano being thrown away. Does that every happen? Seems they are always sold and re-sold and such.
ReplyDeleteThank you. And I never really thought about it, I just came up with the idea of the poem ending with the piano being thrown away. I just assumed that people throw them away when they stop working but now that I think about it, it could've been re-sold again or fixed.
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