I sat at the piano tonight for the first time in forty-seven years. The bench creaked like a rusty gate.
My fingers remembered the shape of a C major scale. Not much else. That was enough.
The suitcase still sits in the corner of the parlor. The airport luggage tag from my mother's last trip is still tied to the handle. I never unpacked it after the funeral.
Upstairs, the neighbor boy practices his trumpet. He's terrible. But he keeps trying. That's something.
I thought about all the weight I carry. The piano. The suitcase. The silence where music used to be.
I played a few wrong notes. Laughed. Then I decided: tomorrow I'll call the music school down the block. Let some child make noise on this old thing.
And maybe I'll finally cut that luggage tag off. Let my mother's suitcase become just a suitcase.
The boy upstairs hit a high note that cracked. I smiled. Grief, it turns out, can finally be set down — not all at once, but note by note.