Crossing Worlds
After a lifetime of being deaf, I can finally hear the piano keys again. I think I deserve it. You’ve made every breath from the first to the last worth it. As it appears, we don’t have a single grand finale, but an abundance of it. Everything feels like a show but we own it, despite thinning smiles and sweaty palms. “The show must go on”, you’d say with that faintly aloof grin of yours. I want us to be as close as the ambitions we’ve held close to our hearts since we were five. I want us before the flashing lights during the bluest and warmest nights, before the screaming crowds, and before the healing hearts and dying throats. If time works out and you don’t have to run the lights again, if the past finally transcends the duality of you and I, if all these glowing stars thin out into the graying skies… let us ride the trains before midnight again and see the 12am sky together. I want your morning mumblings and weary face. I want our party nine in the afternoon, back to the streets where it all began. I want the world before us, drunk and in love with our playing. I think I deserve it. I know you deserve it. I want us to deserve this. After a lifetime of being deaf, I can’t stand waiting another second listening to the silence stretched out before us. Bring the keys, and we’ll head out for this journey. When we meet at the top with the world glittering before us, we’ll be singing with the voices of gods and making music from the prettiest scores. If one day we manage to let go of ourselves and cry until our skin drowns and our faces change, let us make appointments with the ghosts of our past and have evening tea with them. Let us tell them stories of our present lives, and how the morning sun never leaves our hearts. Let them ponder how hard we fought to forget the anger and madness, how that madness led us here to home after thousands of Sunday mornings on the road and in unholy small town churches. After a lifetime of being deaf, I can finally hear the piano again. I can hear something just like you. You are warm waters and warm winters, with eyes like the sun and a lion cub for a heart. I want your lips soft from the smoke swallowing us in a gentle glow. I want my head light and cloudless (please, no more thunderstorms and overhead clouds). I want your hands doing what they love most, although your fingertips have calluses you think are unsightly. I wished she could be here to hear me now. Love, forgive me for my apostasies. After lifetimes of going deaf, the music playing in my ears has become the most godly.
