Finally,
I am the last car here.
I am an island.
I returned here,
tugged back by some irresistible gravity,
but I hit the ground too hard.
My knees have buckled,
leaving me prostrate.
Stop crying. You're in public.
Grip the wheel tight and
drive. Don't think. Just go.
I'm home, I say,
more a defense than an announcement—
because this place is not home anymore.
The only voice to whisper back is the cuckoo clock,
click, tock, cuckoo, crazy.
Crazy, because I hear notes in the silence,
gentle baritone notes,
and no matter how fast I play,
how far my fingers stretch,
how purely the vibrato resonates,
I cannot overwhelm the remembered sound.
The bow trembles in my right hand,
and under my left, my pizzicato slips.
Start again. Again. Over again.
Those two, trying so hard, they cannot know.
Those two, they will never guess.
Every day I have sat like stone at a slab of polished pine,
back-straight/legs-crossed/elbows-in/eyes-down,
dodging questions and hiding from warm voices.
It's been months since I could speak truthfully to those two—
months since I could speak at all without fear tightening my tongue,
and still they call our house a home.
I am displaced. A watery weight, shifting,
my cup dribbling over.
How have I measured these seven days alone?—in breaths, blinks, heartbeats?
With numbers, with questions?
No:
with tweezers, I think,
plucking time out from sensitive skin.
Second after stinging second.
I devour my meal in silence.
Last Saturday, I devoured noise and light and the motion of agitated bodies.
I drank with purpose, drank violently,
drank myself to the floorboards.
Last Saturday, I forgot how to feel alone. How to feel.
I forgot clumsy fingers and maple necks,
heartstrings and gut strings,
warm sheets and crisp papers.
I forgot the beginning and the end. Da Capo al Fine.
(Hold on until the weekend, Juniper—
you can forget it all again.)