The Quiet Years
I have not been touched in a very long time.
Dust settles on my keys like a soft shroud. Sunlight filters through the cracked stained glass, painting slow-moving shapes across the hall, across me. Time does not pass here in hours or days. It breathes differently in this place. It listens.
I remember his hands.
They were not always steady. Not always sure. But they were alive. When they played me, they told stories more clearly than any spoken word. His fingers would hesitate just before a note, as if asking permission. And then he would press, and I would answer.
We were never just instrument and musician. We were something else. A shared pulse. A bridge between feeling and form. He gave meaning. I gave voice.
And then, one day, he was gone.
I did not know why. I am not built to understand absence. Only presence. I waited. And in my waiting, I remembered.
There were days—perhaps years—when birds nested in the rafters. When wind danced through broken windows and played soft ghost-notes on my strings. I listened. I dreamed. I hummed the memory of his music to myself. Not out loud. But inside the resonance of my wood, deep beneath the soundboard.
The hall grew still with me. We are not lonely, exactly. We are... paused.
Until today.
There is a shift in the air. A vibration not caused by wind. My frame tightens, recognizing a weight in the distance. Footsteps. Slow. Familiar.
I do not yet see him. But I know.
He is here.
And something inside me begins to tremble, like a string just slightly out of tune, eager to be touched.
