Someplace Else

It was a Saturday, April’s angle of sun outside, breeze sweeping shadows of maple leaves across the grass beyond my south study window, like waves continually moving yet staying in the same space, like Mia’s hands playing scales at the piano in the next room, the sounds ascending, descending, changing key but not their relations or rhythm, like remembering then forgetting, something called to mind and lost again with the next breath, as her fingers kept moving. I heard a pause, then at the same pace again notes entering the Bach piece, and a new sense of floating, of being carried, lifted, swayed and lifted again for minutes—then a faltering, an eddy at the trill, catch of the right hand’s fingers losing their ease—she left off, tried it again, picking up at the same spot, stuck in place, trying to force a return, but had to rest finally, let the body let go, try something else, come back later to find that spot and recover it when the muscles, the light, the shadows of family photographs on top of the piano would be different. For now another song.