It’s 12:34 a.m. and I’m done staring at the ceiling. I better practice piano. Noise is a dish best served in solitude. I crawl over my tossed blankets and maneuver through this mess of a home and sit down. I crack my fingers like I see pianists do in cartoons, though my fingers don’t crack, and start. Practicing scales like I used to do my freshman year. Callused hands play a tale of a younger child, one who died a long, long time ago. I find myself playing in homage and in mourning, my childhood flashing before my eyes.
C Major (0 flats 0 sharps) The start and the end of all I am
Home felt easy as a kid, like I could stay there forever, and visit after college. That the garden outside would always be blooming those daffodils, tulips, and even roses. The first two are perennials so I’ll see them every year; not so much the roses.
I’ll keep trying to start this garden. I know how important it is to my mother. I find myself watering them all in her name, especially the roses. She’s inside shaking her head in disappointment at her overtime work. With one long sigh, her “It’s going to be a long night” carries itself to me. I empty the rest of the can on the roses.
F Major (1 flat: Bb) Delusion and homeliness
In elementary school, I get the mail when I get off the bus. It’s still nice out. The power lines always have something to say, but I never listen to them. I know my place is here. I proceed to shuffle through the mail, and I hear cars going over the mountain. I hope they know where they’re going.
Bb Major (2 Flats; Bb, Eb) Distrust and Distraught
In the morning, I wait for the bus, alone. All I can see is my breath. The wind rustles through the Blue Spruces outside our home, and it is vaguely unsettling. My attention is drawn to it; I leer at what may or may not be there. Eventually, my eyes widen in horror at the amalgamation of spots that form a man hunched under a tree. I freeze in the presence of this imaginary man, one I’ve seen too many times. He never even existed. I take a few steps backwards. I cannot turn my back. I wish Mom was here to protect me. I slowly walk back down the driveway, but the bus turns the corner, is hissing its way up the street. The man flees in the headlights.
Eb Major (3 Flats; Bb, Eb, Ab) Repenting
I’m kneeling in front of my bed. My knees are raw from the carpet burns. I ask God if I’ll ever be loved and tell Him how I am scared to die alone. Through shallow breaths and shaky eyes, tears swallow my pride. I am on my hands and knees, praying for salvation. For some rest.
Something to stop the tossing and turning at night. This limbo of paranoia and trees scratching at the screen of my window. I pray to Him.
Salvation should be now. As a third grader, I wish God would take me to Heaven. St. Peter would see a nine-year-old boy and shake his head in mourning. “Too young. Far too young.” It’s been years since I stepped in a church, but now I pray to Bast for the protection of animals and others, and to Apollo when he flickers in my candles. My knees have healed, but that’s all.
Ab Major (4 Flats; Bb, Eb, Ab, Db) Isolation or Independence
It’s 5 a.m. now and Mom went to work. It’s the height of the pandemic. The sun barely peeks up over the mountain outside, filtered through the curtains. I love sleeping in Mom’s bed. It’s bigger and comfier than my bed. It feels maternal, like she’s here in spirit. That spiritually she is still asleep and makes room for me. I crawl in, make my space and drift off. I’ll wake up eventually.
I wake up drenched in sweat. I look at the clock on my phone and it is around 2:30. I groan and close my eyes again, trying to sleep, but it’s too hot to even think about sleeping. I keep my eyes closed hoping I’ll eventually sleep. The silence in my room is haunting, but the whirring of a box fan makes it manageable. I hear the house phone ringing, but I ignore it. ‘If they’re important they’ll call again’ to quote my grandfather. It rings again but I keep laying there. After that, it gets quiet again. I decide it is time to get up, so I turn on my stomach and actually get a good look at my phone. It is 3:30, not 2:30. Mom has to be home now. I unlock my phone and scan my notifications. A missed call. I sigh and get rid of the notification. I hear the angry steps of my mother, she still has her shoes on. I’ve always been able to tell who it is by their footsteps. Mom makes the boards creak and cry out. It’s always a specific pattern of steps, like impending doom. She stops right in front of my door, and I hear a loud pounding. “A**** come help unload groceries”, with that another defeated sigh. I walk out.
Db Major (5 flats; Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb) Severed
I remember how it feels to be angry when my mom hugs me. Tears soaking into the fibers of her work clothes. She loves me, but she keeps suffocating me in some half-assed apology. Her yells are still fresh in my mind. The freezing linoleum in our kitchen on my feet. Children are impressionable after all. Standing with balled fists as she wraps herself around me. “I love you miles and miles forever.” A pause in her sobs, she waits for me to say it back. “Miles and miles forever,” I mumble. She lets me go and I slowly walk back to my room. Looking back, accountability never seemed to be important enough. As long as I’m not a quitter, because “I didn’t raise a quitter.”
But for once, I would’ve loved to hear, “I’m sorry.”
Gb Major (6 Flats; Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb) Communication
I can’t go back. I’ve sat on that bed for too long. I’m bawling as Mother lays beside me. I remember how, for years, I’d be on that bed, silence surrounding the sharp inhales and disapproval of my mother. In a world of free speech goddamnit why wouldn’t I talk? She would wait for hours for me to say something. All she heard was defiance. All I felt was trapped. I always ended up telling her whatever was wrong. I’ve learned to shut her door on the way out, and lock my door on the way in.
Cb Major (7 Flats; Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb, Fb) Escapism
The wishing well outside my house is filled with weeds. I still see daisies in there, but at this point, they’ve grown mildew. I remember the day I first looked in there.
Eventually it rolls into autumn. Mold coating my esophagus, running up and down my throat. I keep my throat closed. I keep digging through the soil trying to find a lost memory. All I hear is Mom yelling from the house. I have my back towards the road so I can see her coming.
C# Major (7 Sharps; F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#) Coping
Our chimney keeps smoking despite my lectures on how it hurts my lungs. I find cigarette butts littering our yard. If I’m lucky, there are still a good couple of puffs in there (I am nothing if not a hypocrite), something to dull the incessant screaming. My bones, rattling. Thoughts shattering my psyche. Ricocheting through my cranium. But I don’t smoke.
F# Major (6 Sharps; F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#) Revisiting
Today, I decided to listen to the power lines. They told me to run and live a life as vast as they span. It feels right thinking of it like that. If I could spread my wings and soar like the ruffled grouse, though I’ve never seen one, I’d be able to breathe a bit easier. Home feels stagnant, and so does Mother. She urges me to live. Because Lord knows she lived.
B Major (5 Sharps; F# C#, G#, D#, A#) Analytical
At this point, it feels monotonous. In and out of this cyclical and cynical life, whirring me ’round, like I’m spiraling through Fibonacci. Mother told me about how pinecones follow Fibonacci and that I should follow greatness because what am I if not vicarious?
E Major (4 Sharps; F#, C#, G#, D#) Intertwined
Outside today, it’s overcast. I wish I could explain how perfect it feels. Mother feels the same way. I wish she didn’t. But I guess I am her child. As a kid, I’d have this fantasy that I was secretly never a part of this family and that my parents stole me. It always felt nice to think of it. Despite how my body is the same shape as my mother’s and how my tears fall just like hers.
How generations of altered DNA brought me here. That, when I cut, the blood I see is the blood of my mother and father.
A Major (3 Sharps: F#, C#, G#) “Where is your empathy? Where is your compassion?”
Mother Cinderella was never my favorite princess. Probably because she always reminded me of Mother. Mother was a real-life Cinderella who never got a Prince Charming. At the beck and call of motherly love and labor. Even now, my mother doesn’t flinch in hot water. I hope that one day she finds her Prince Charming.
D Major (2 Sharps; F#, C#) “You’re 45 going on 15”- Mother
Solivagant, it feels more painful than solitude, more melancholic. Like I’m not meant to be independent. Like I need someone. Old souls have become an epidemic of children who are hurting. I hope I never grow up. Until I can truly become old.
G Major (1 Sharp; F#) Denial
Somedays, I think we are a family. That blood and genealogy asserts my place in this world. I end up telling myself that you didn’t hurt us, and I am just stuck in the past. You’re a good
mother. You could’ve been those horror stories you told me on the way to Scouts. But you could’ve been a lot better.
I hope you’ll see that one day.
C Major (0 Sharps 0 Flats) Rekindled
One day I will come back. When I’m gray, and this is the only place I have left for these unkempt roots to run rampant. I’ll walk through these abandoned quarters, and I’ll find something that reminds me of better times. And I hope that when I die, my ashes will be spread on this soil. So, one day, this place can finally feel like home.
The mourning dove greets me by the time I finish on middle C and G4. The hollowness of the chord rests in my stomach. I shut the piano. Turn off my ceiling light, pull out my phone and stare at myself before taking a picture. The Sun is the only thing keeping my room lit, besides Apollo’s candle. I lift my phone, look slightly up, and freeze. Take the picture and I look at my eyes, the bags under them and how my eyes are my father’s, how my jawline is my mother’s, how my melancholy is my mother’s, how I am slowly becoming my mother. How I am always becoming the thing that kills me, the thing that saves me, the home and the longing, all at once.
