They are the only ones I master. I am the only one who plays them. Eighty-eight colored keys with thick white faces and skinny black noses. Eighty-eight under ten sprawled fingers. Eighty-eight singing their own song. From deep to high, their pitch rings in loud invisible tremors.
Their tone is in their chords. They send hordes of emotions to whoever listens. Their song either dances in the air with unrecognized bliss, or slumps through it with dignified tears. This is their story.
Let one be forgotten, they’d all fall into a broken mix of notes, each falling deeper and deeper into an erroneous heap of sound. Da, da, da the music plays. They speak.
When I am too drowned and too sick to keep playing, when I am done with the repetition, then it is I who kills the music. When there is nothing left to play from them. Eighty-eight who keep silent. Eighty-eight who are mute without the touch of another. Eighty-eight whose only reason is to sing.