the piano's dream

The two butterflies came back for three more days, flitting through the balcony and circling around the bedroom just after lunch. On the fifth day, only one came and then not at all. Every afternoon after this, I would stand looking out at the busy street, the green water of the river, the stray dogs sleeping in the grass. No black orange wings. No sudden surprises. Just the city churning out smoke, the clouds hanging low, and a strange wind.

There is an odd luck that surfaces sometimes, when life bursts into the unexpected. The methodical waltz is suddenly a dizzy sock hop. Routine is replaced by interruption. The air electrified and we are no longer hungry or tired or thirsty. We are a private version of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, building mountains from mashed potatoes. The possibilities fan out in countless directions, and we grow drunk on them. And then, it all slides back. The snail in his shell. The socks in the drawers. The dishes are washed. Children are tucked into bed. Someone realizes we need toilet paper. The rent is due in a week. The waking sleep returns.

Being surrounded by waste, and what seems pointless is overwhelming. I pass a school for the deaf. The lawn is cut, even in the middle of summer. Maybe the deaf never stop learning here. On the side of the building, a series of pianos sweat under sheets of plastic. They are all broken, sagging into the soft earth, keys dangling, lids ripped off, stinking of mold and rotting wood. I have passed them hundreds of times since I noticed them last winter. Why are they still here ? Who broke all of them? What will happen to them? Will they just be gone one day when I expect to see them?

I am often accused of fixating on the worst here, of magnifying the bleak and ignoring the beauty. I want to defend myself, but my stomach slips into my throat and like it does in many dreams, my voice shrinks to the size of a pinhole.