The Fabric of Memory

before it all got lost up in the mess he said not all men are bad and i am not like your dad | i will hold you even though you’re slightly mad | i am not a man who will ever break you | we had pennies in our pockets | we had hope in our eyes | he said girl you’ve got a million different faces | so why’d you put on that disguise | well you can take what you want | cause i’ve got nothing |

Sliding the brush out of the tube – a careful twisting, a slow, sure extraction – I swipe eyelashes, staring myself down.

Blink, blink.

“I know better.”

Mirrored peptalk, blood red mouth pursed, shining pearls biting bottom lip.

“Why’d I spend so much time dressing up in disguise?” flipping clothes off the bed, pressing silky shirt against soft belly, bare breasts. The shirt tossed aside for another and another. The perfect outfit: confidence, actualized.

A bobby pin spread wide, feet pushed apart, legs open, hair snug and slipped in, forced tightly. Wet hairspray.

Spritz, spritz.

“There’s masochism in making the same mistake over. The hurt, expected – no different than past experience: the pain a little deeper, a little harder, a little faster.”

Wincing, a zipper pulled taught across skin, leaving marks on the flesh. Slipping toes into shoes one size too small, a firm fit. Pointed heel digging into carpet, pressing.

“That pain, it felt good.” Fingers fondling the clasp, choking beads around white skin, pulling tight, pinching. Just enough.

Looking in the mirror, slender hands fingering beads.

“No.” A little more, please. Choking beads pulled tighter, a breath escaping parted painted lips, a quick gasp.

“I’m just fine on my own,” smoothing shirt over skin, touching clad legs, pressing away worry, welcoming trouble.

One last look in the mirror, a small smile, eyes sparkling. A laugh, breathy.

“I’m just fine on my own.”

Slammed door, clicking heels. Confidence: self actualized.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Tick, tick.
Numbers falling off the calendar, a pile of mangled integers.
That wily six stabbing Monday in the eye.

Exactly one hundred and four days, I’ve known about you. Seventeen days short of one third this year. Seventeen, the most random number.

I think we could be friends. We could share ice cream even though I’d turn it down after only the second bite because I don’t really like ice cream much, but do really like watching you eat it. We could laugh at inside jokes never said outside. We could be close, we could.

Smack, smack.
Two commits suicide with Tuesday; sliding off the page, they’re both tired of this count down.
Broken feet, formal fonts cracked.

But you’d tell me, you’d say: one third this year, it’s not long. Not long enough to feel sad.

And I’d smile, I’d laugh: nodding to convince you to convince me. I’d agree.

Drip, drip.
Thursday’s got a tear in her eye as she lets go of thirty’s hand.
They’re giving up before the rescue team hurries in to tape Friday back together with Saturday, before someone finds nine and ten clinging to each other in the waves.

You’d push my hair out of my eyes and you’d tell me, you’d say: it’s been good, it’s been on purpose, I will remember you.

I’d watch you walk away and I’d not tell you, I’d not say: we could, just for one more day, sit together right here on the couch. We could pretend time’s not run out, we could.

Slip, slip.
Another month gone. And another and another and the leaves have changed from wet to green to gold, the seasons waging bets on how long you’d stay.

If I’d ask you, if I’d beg you to sit right here with me just for now you’d smile, you’d look away: you’d sit a little longer and touch me like you care and I’d believe it was on purpose just like you said.

But you’d find your shoes when my eyes got too heavy to hold open because you’re no good at saying goodbye.

I promised you I wouldn’t be sad when you left. These falling numbers, all these days losing face, they know.

I lied.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

(back by demand)

**

I get up at 6:42am. The alarm radio blaring, the announcer recounts the top 5 news stories of the day. I take a 12 minute shower and think of you once while I wash my hair but urge the thought down the drain with the suds. I spend 10 minutes carefully applying makeup no one will take notice of and another 10 combing my hair the same way I comb my hair every morning. I give 2 minutes’ thought to my wardrobe, not caring particularly because it’s likely I won’t leave my office for the duration of the day. I allow 1 minute 30 seconds to brush my teeth before leaving the house.

I take 547 steps to the grocery store to buy lunch for the day and another 287 to the coffee shop, where I spend $2.76 on 1 extra large dark roast coffee with room for cream which I pay for with a crisp $5 bill. I think of you 4 times between the front door and the coffee shop, once as I count my change and once more when I take that first sip of coffee. I use the remaining $2.24 to pay for the fare to ride the 135 the 12 blocks to work. I get off the bus and walk 627 steps to the door of my office.

I use the third key on my keychain to unlock the door. Inside, I punch in my 4 digit security code to turn off the alarm. Mine is the third office on the right. You will not visit my office today. I section the 7 and ½ hours of my work day into partitions of 3, 2-hour sections and 1, 1 and ½ hour section and bill any 4 of my 14 clients for each of those windows of time appropriately. I spend ½ -hour outside in the sun over lunch after carefully applying an SPF 15 sunscreen and putting on my pair of chipped, white sunglasses. Outside, I eat 1 small salad, ensuring I chew each bite 30 times. I take 4 bathroom breaks – 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon – a consequence of the 1 extra large coffee. I accept 27 phone calls and 17 emails – a slow day. I walk home after work. A good 2,742 steps to my front door.

I smoke 1 cigarette after work on my balcony and contemplate opening 1 bottle of wine but instead drink 1 glass of water while preparing a meal for 1. I eat in front of the television, allowing myself 1 hour of indulgent programming. I turn off the television, turn on my favourite CD – 67 minutes of music – and read 98 pages of my book, stopping twice to pet the cat 3 times under each ear.

I walk to the window 4 times and see the same 3 people standing in the parking lot each time. You are not 1 of those 3 people. My phone rings 3 times and each time I ignore it. You are not ringing me any 1 of those 3 times. I wash my 1 plate, 1 fork and 2 pots and spend 11 minutes drying the 4 dishes and putting them away in their 3 respective cupboards.

I check my Facebook, myspace, email, blog and spend 27 minutes thinking of 13 ways to waste time so I don’t pick up the phone and dial your 7 digits. I boil water on the back burner of the stove to make 1 cup of tea. I sip it, staring at my pack of smokes, contemplating having a second. I don’t. Instead, I take 8 minutes to wash the makeup off my face and brush my teeth and turn to bed. I arrange my 4 pillows and choose 1 book from the pile of 11 next to my bed. I turn off the overhead light and snap on the bedside lamp. I read for 22 minutes, until I fall asleep with the lights still on, still counting on you to think of me.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

642: The Balance Number. Describes how you react to life’s challenges. It motivates us to handle life’s challenges at best. Reveals strengths in emotional or turbulent times.

5: Five is conjectured to be the only odd untouchable number (a positive integer that cannot be expressed as the sum of all the proper divisors of any positive integer).

12: The word “twelve” is a native English word that presumably arises from the Germanic compound twa-lif (”two-leave”).

10: Ten is symbolic for sexual intercourse between a male and a female.

2: The Life Path 2 suggests that you entered this plane with a spiritual quality in your makeup allowing you to be one of the peacemakers in society. Your strengths come from an ability to listen and absorb. You are a fixer, a mediator, and a very diplomatic type of person using persuasive skills rather than forcefulness to make your way in the world.

130: In Chinese Numerology, 0 is a number that’s discarded. 1: Practical. This includes manual labor, athletic ability and physical coordination, and plain old common sense. 3: Thought. Intellectual capacity, creative ability, and the capacity to carry out ideas.

547: In Leet Orthography, representative of the word “Sat,” or abbreviation for “Saturday,” named for the Roman god Saturnus. Medieval and Renaissance scholars associated Saturn with one of the four humors of ancient medicine, melancholy. Physicians, scholars, philosophers and scientists, which includes writers and musicians, seem to have a strong Saturn placement which tends to lean such natives toward melancholy.

287: The number 7 occurs 287 times in the Old Testament. Seven deals with the esoteric, scholarly aspects of magic and is representative of scholarly activities, mystery and active esoteric knowledge. Seven represents activation of imagination, and manifestation resulting in our lives through the use of conscious thought and awareness. Ruled by Saturn, Seven represents impractical dreaming.

276: 2+7+6=15. The 15^th card of the Tarot deck is representative of The Devil. Perhaps the most misunderstood card of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really “Satan” at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. With Capricorn as its ruling sign, this is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement.

1: In Indian Numerology, the psychic number reveals the way you look at yourself, who you really want to be and what defines your basic character. It represents your basic predispositions and talents that lead you to interact daily in a particular way. 1 as a psychic number represents a disposition that is sunny, energetic, radiant, confident, proud, self centered, goal oriented, socially active, leader vs. follower, self actualized, authoritative. 1 can also be cruel in intensity, arrogant and ready to rule, yet on account of the regal qualities also a protector and provider. Known for lavish gifts, boldness, with good endurance.

4: The symbolic meanings of the number four are linked to those of the cross and the square. Almost from prehistoric times, the number four was employed to signify what was solid, what could be touched and felt; an outstanding symbol of wholeness and universality, a symbol which drew all to itself.

224: 2+2+4=8. The Dharma chakra, a Buddhist symbol, has eight spokes. The Buddha’s principal teaching — the Four Noble Truths — ramifies as the Noble Eightfold Path. In Mahayana Buddhism, the branches of the Eightfold Path are embodied by the Eight Great Bodhisattvas (Manjushri, Vajrapani, Avalokiteshvara, Maitreya, Kshitigarbha, Nivaranavishkambhi, Akashagarbha, and Samantabhadra). These are later (controversially) associated with the Eight Consciousnesses according to the Yogachara school of thought: consciousness in the five senses, thought-consciousness, self-consciousness and unconsciousness-’consciousness’ (alaya-vijñana). The ‘irreversible’ state of enlightenment is the Eight Ground or bhūmi.

135: In astrology, when two planets are 135 degrees apart, they are in an astrological aspect called a sesquiquadrate and is usually interpreted as providing an influence of irritation or agitation on the planets involved.

12: In antiquity, even before Christianity, 12 was a perfect, complete number.

627: “Reason Number 627 to See the World – to see how the world sees you. I am still walking around in my same body, with my same life, and the same personality, but out there is a whole new set of eyes, a new batch of teachers. Every moment, every nod of a passing stranger gives me a slightly new perspective of myself, of the other people who live on this planet, and how I might live on it differently with them. Tiny little lessons, each step, each glance is a moment to see something new.”

3: Feri Tradition (sometimes spelled Faery, Faerie) postulates the existence of three separate yet interdependent souls as a part of the natural psychic structure of the human being. Although a multitude of different names are used to describe them, they are sometimes called the fetch, the talker, and the Godself. The talker is that part of humans which is self-aware and deals with language, rational thought, and the gathering and dissemination of knowledge. It is the first line of communication with others. The fetch is emotional, pre-verbal, primal, and childlike. It is concerned with generating and storing energy, with the maintenance of the physical body, with housing memories, and is the first to feel deep emotions, such as fear or falling in love. Finally, the Godself is the eternal part of humans, a direct connection to the Goddess. It is said that the talker cannot speak directly to the Godself as they do not speak the same language; therefore, Feris approach the Godself by way of the fetch using symbolism (art, poetry, music, visualizations, etc.). A central practice of Feri concerns bringing these souls into alignment so they may communicate freely, granting the practitioner a deeper awareness of their own personal Godself and the Goddess.

½: one of a pair, as a partner

14: The number of lines in a sonnet, meaning “little song.” Shakespeare’s Sonnet 14 contains one dominant image, that of a young man’s eyes as stars, from which the poet attains his knowledge.

15: In tennis, the number 15 represents the first point gained in a game.

30: In ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ the French existentialist Albert Camus comments that the age of thirty is a crucial period in the life of a man, for at that age he gains a new awareness of the meaning of time.

27: The smallest positive integer requiring four syllables to name in English, though it can be unambiguously defined in just two: “three cubed.”

17: There is an unproved conjecture that 17 is the value most likely to be picked as a “random” number.

67: considered a “lucky prime” or a lucky number that is also a natural prime in mathematics. In a sense, such numbers are doubly “lucky” because they’ve survived two different sieves. It’s known that there are infinitely many primes and it’s known that there are infinitely many lucky numbers, but it’s not known if there are infinitely many lucky primes.

11: Number Eleven possesses the qualities of intuition, patience, honesty, sensitivity, and spirituality, and is idealistic. Numerologists believe that events linked to the time 11:11 appear more often than chance or coincidence. This belief is related to the concept of synchronicity, the experience of two or more events which occur in a meaningful manner, but which are causally un-related.

13: The number of Norse gods (there were 12) at a banquet that was crashed by the evil spirit Loki (making 13) who killed Baldr with an arrow/spear made out of mistletoe using Hodr, thus marking the beginning of Ragnarok, the final battle waged between the Æsir, led by Odin, and the various forces of the giants or Jötnar, including Loki, followed by the destruction of the world and its subsequent rebirth.

22: The number 22 is significant in many systems of numerology, often called the Master Builder or Spiritual Master in Form. This ‘master number’ includes all the attributes of the number 2, twice over, and also those of the 4. People who are 22s are said to find themselves feeling as if they live in two worlds, one which is overwhelmed by the mundane, and the other by the fantastic.

Back corner bar, lights down low, summer sun a filter of speckled dust through foggy windows; leaning back in my chair I tip my glass toward lips longing for the cool wet of summer, the way the first Popsicle of the season tasted in the backyard, wearing your new bathing suit that’d be covered in wet and sticky and muddy before long, when you were six.

Shuffling chairs kick up patchouli clouds, a scarf falls off the table onto the planked floor and we reach at the same time, laughing shyly as our hands touch too much. I nod, turning back to the music, tapping toes to the beat of long summer nights, experiencing that floating feeling you get when life comes together in a beautifully poignant moment, the fracture of the kaleidoscope reflecting the symmetry of how simple life can be, how perfect life can be.

Strummed chords and hummed tunes, the lady on the dance floor is awesome twitch – her head and hips moving in opposite directions, her hands clapping, waving, shaking to the same rhythm she’s danced a thousand times before. A spread smile, wide lips, shining teeth, her face turned to the rafters – a hallelujah of praise for this little piece of Dionysus.

Clap, clap, clap – it’s so easy getting lost in the tempo of this energy, it’s so easy getting lost in the sound.

Setting sun, the clouds a pretty pink dusting of the long goodbye – the light of summer sticking to the edges of night, off-kilter voices and jagged harmony floating out the door tickling the backs of my bare legs on the slow walk home. A perfect night for summer.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

I don’t sleep much these days.

Instead, I pad around the house in those ridiculous fuzzy purple slippers you gave me last year as a peace offering for the anniversary you got too drunk to remember. I watch the lights in the high-rises across the way flicker on and off on floors being cleaned by people being paid minimum wage.

There’s a hole in the toe of my right slipper. I pad a lot, these days.

I pretend the banks of lights sweeping on and off are dire signals, like when I was little and mom told me to flash the back porch light as a warning to the neighbours if He tried to break into the house again. Tungsten Morse code.

I light the stove, put the kettle on, slide open the porch door, spark a smoke, sit on my heels.

The distance between us is gathering stale air. It’s settling in my bones, making them ache. I pretend I can see right into your bedroom window. You’re not sleeping well again and I watch as your eyes flutter. It’s so easy to see you’re conflicted.

I think about calling you, waking you up, seeing if you’re ready to talk about the hurt, but the kettle whistles and instead I make chamomile tea and pet the cat and return to perch on the edge of the porch where I pretend to watch you some more.

You blame me for so much. It’s true, I didn’t have to sleep with him or get so distant or hang up on you or say bad things to people I knew would tell you eventually. You didn’t have to lie to me or trade our time together to get high or spend all our money on ways to keep the party going or tell me to kill myself.

My big toe gets cold, so I go back inside where it’s damp with dark. I crawl into bed still clutching the cup of tea I’ve not sipped yet and I sit with my back propped against the headboard and I sing till I get so loud the neighbour next door pounds a fist on the wall.

The clock, it says 3:17, the little dot illuminating AM. I don’t have much concept of time these days.

I turn on the bedside lamp and look at the bruises on my legs. This one here, it’s new. I don’t remember seeing it yesterday. I push my thumb into it and get sad when it doesn’t hurt much.

The cat, he sniffs my tea and takes a lick. It’s not even warm any more. Tepid tea.

I put the cup down on the dresser beside the other four cups still full with rotting tea and I slide down the bed, pulling blankets over my head. I kick my feet and let the comforter fall, the same way you used to shake the sheets over me when it got too hot to sleep.

I think about calling you to come shake the sheets over me, but it’s not hot out and I would be silly to ask you to shake them when it’s cold.

xoxo,
M.L. H’art

On a Friday night, we’re standing on my deck, the electric blue and red bouncing off our wine glasses. There are dozens of them, yelling, jumping, punching, kicking. As the anger grows, so too does the mob. They swarm from all corners of the dark alley, throwing fists into the air before they even have a chance to make contact with someone’s face.

They are angry, so angry.

One cop car, lights bouncing. Then two, then four, then six, then eight: the alleyway a scatter of sirens and split light. The chopper hovers in – wide beam spotlight highlighting the faces of young men with nothing better to do. The men scatter like ants under a magnifying glass – their skin beginning to smolder with the heat of the sun.

Paddy wagon, fire truck, ambulance: a regalia of city force making little impact on the spreading mob mentality take nearly two hours to clear the area. Media trucks with tall satellite towers and coiffed reporters with painted red lips arrive nearly as fast as the emergency services.

We are drunk and this is just another spectacle side effect of living in a city getting too big for its small town roots. It’s no different watching it from your balcony than it is on your TV. The plot’s just the same:

“…a combination of liquor and testosterone culminated in an all-out brawl outside a downtown bar last evening. The nearly 30 culprits – who have yet to be identified – swarmed two police officers as they attempted to break up a fight between two bar patrons. City Police contribute the riot to over-consumption of alcohol…”

This infection of violence is spreading: a super virus gnawing on the fleshy fabric of our city.

I’m awoken by the pop! pop! of gunshots at 2:30am the next Thursday. Screams filter up through my fourth story bedroom window. I am awake, staring in disbelief at the club-goers scurrying through the parking lot behind my building. This time, there are no cops.

The crowd disperses into two vehicles – one on either end of the parking lot. The vehicles lurch forward, grills growling, headlights off. They charge at one another, speed up as they get closer.

Smash!

They back up, rev forward again.

Smash!

The drivers are pressing heavy feet into gas pedals – a tug of war; as one car loses ground, the other gains. A back and forth of metal and squealing rubber.

A woman crawling on the ground grabs a shirt lying under the only tree. She is crying or laughing – hard to tell from so far up. She smushes the shirt up under her nose, barely noticing the heavy metal match up battling behind her.

One lonely cop car races around the corner from the far end of the alley. The two cars – racing toward each other again – swerve and speed out opposite ends of the parking lot, hoods crumpled.

The woman runs, still holding the shirt to her face.

Here is the cop car. The chopper. The ambulance. Fixtures of an urban scene becoming too commonplace in my own backyard.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Photo Credit: Lucas Boutilier

Sitting across from myself, I tap my spoon on the lip of my mug and sigh. The table is scattered with the shrapnel of an eternal coffee break: crumpled, beige-stained napkins, cold and sour coffee lining the bottom of a cherry-lipstick stained cup (the pink o a perfect open-mouthed kiss against the mug’s white porcelain). Strewn sections of the newspaper lay underneath torn sugar packets, wrinkled and empty, the sprinkled granules proof of defeat.

I turn to me and say: “If not now, whenever. There’s no rush.”

I nudge a fallen strand of hair out of my eyes as I purse my lips in hard concentration. “I want it now.”

Pushing my coffee cup away from myself with both hands as the sticky spoon clatters to the floor I say, “Patience is a lesson I have to learn.”

“I cannot outfox patience. It’s likely I’d be stuck in this very place an eternity,” I say as I flash a look of contempt. I’ve obviously grown bored of waiting around for good things to happen.

I reach for my spoon, fingers brushing sticky crumbs under my chair. I shoot a glib look of disbelief. “Take time. I rush into things too often and get myself into a trouble I can’t undo. Chill the fuck out, okay?”

Jutting out my lip, I blow out hot, acrid breath, ruffling my bangs as I roll my eyes. “For how long? Until I’ve grown old, until my hair is gray, until I’ve lost my motivation and determination, until I’m able to accept things just the way they are, until I’m no longer interested in impacting change? Shut up.”

I blow on the bowl of the spoon, steaming it. I rub it with the edge of my sweater sleeve and blow again so I can stick it to my nose. Leaving the spoon hanging, eyes crossed, I say, “Not grow stale, but learn to appreciate the lulls. Boredom’s always been my biggest foe.”

“A foe I perpetuate with lackadaisical acceptance, an inability to grow a backbone and take what I want.” I snatch the spoon off my nose and toss it to the table with a sharp clank.

“Me-ow!” I pick up the emptied sugar packets, squishing them in my hand. “I have such expectation. Can’t I trust things will work out the way they ought?” I ask, tossing the crinkled packet carcasses to the table with the fallen spoon.

Eyes rolling again. “Seriously. How might things work out the way they ought if I refuse to take control of any of them?” Slouching back in my chair, I cross my arms over my chest - defensive, frustrated.

Fingering the edges of the paper, making small rips in the corners, I say, “I don’t know. There’s just nothing I can do right now other than wait. I can wait.”

Chuckling, a nasally hiccup of breath, in and out. “Right. I’ll see how long that lasts.”

The waitress comes around with the bill. Five coffee refills. One poppy seed muffin. Four hours. I dig into my pocket and produce just enough, with tip, and leave the change sitting on the table. I don’t even attempt to clean up my mess as I push back my chair. I follow me out into the street and recite under my breath: patience is a virtue, right?

xoxo

M.L. H’art

Washing the sheets just like you asked, I snap fresh pillow cases and slip the same flattened, shapeless pillows into their fresh dress – a sham covering the spot your sad head laid the night before, boring a dent in the feathers with the weight of the world squished between two ears, behind two eyes, inside one mouth, the pressure building until at last, when your legs stop twitching and your breathing falls deep, your lips part, letting loose the long breath of a guilt you’ve trapped in your lungs – a guilt that’s not yours.

I smooth dryer-warm sheets over the same stained mattress you curled up on, knees bent, your body concave, curved arms outstretched and begging for a wholeness, hands relaxing with the stillness of life after dark, tummy tucked safely back, bum pushed toward the wall – a perfectly rounded “c.”

Just like you asked, I fold the old baby blanket kept at the foot of the bed for good luck and put it on the top shelf of the bedroom closet with the other forgotten markers of childhood fondness: roller skates, Halloween costumes, clothes three sizes too small. I shake out the bedspread, letting it fall slowly over the skeleton of the way you laid here last night and I pull the corners of the blanket just so, making the length perfectly matched to all four corners of the bed – the bed that’s now made in the memory of you.

xoxo

M.L. H’art

A maniacal laugh, a sort of erratic desperation seeping out of his voice. He is anxious, his hand sliding up and down the receiver of the phone, his breath panting and thick with restlessness.

“You’re so far away,” he says, his voice trapped in the tunnel of the phone line, sounding small and muted. “You know, you’re just not here like I need you to be. I can’t touch you. I want to feel you,” his breath tripping, not escaping the lungs fast enough, air and words trapped inside his cheeks together, wrestling to get out alive.

“It’s a mess, I’m a real mess. I, I, I almost died, you know? Yeah, this weekend. I, uh, okay it felt like I almost died. I just need you to be here for me, right?” his vowels constricted by his tongue lapping his lips between syllables, the words a confused slur of pain and the remnants of a fleeting pleasure, traces of it still stuck to his fingers, his nose.

“I just don’t know what to do, this is fucked up. Real fucked up. Can you call me on Friday?” his voice an interference of irritation and sensation – the want to be caught before the crime comes to be. “You know, remind me to be good, right? You could do that?”

“Shit. Forget it. You don’t owe me that anymore.” A controlled sigh, absorbing the fact six months of separation shouldn’t hold her responsible for his choices. “I gotta go. Sorry if I ruined your day?” a question, a need for confirmation. “Uh, yeah I’ll just talk to you later I guess, okay. Bye.”

xoxo

M.L. H’art

I hate those three notes, the way they hang heavy in the air pregnant with memory. Those notes, they were composed to taunt me. Plucking the hippocampus, they are a forced crescendo, my memory racing like light fingers on polished keys – adagio building accelerando, a grand finale of falling facial expression, a requiem for the way things used to be.

There’s an expectation, hearing those three notes – a hope those three simple steps will bring back everything that was alive the first day I heard them, a hope they’ll erase the time and skepticism between then and now, a hope they’ll close the gap between fantasy and actuality.

The tonic of memory triggered by those three notes spiritedly narrates the morendo of daydream: I think of you and like the three notes, you’re suddenly nothing more than a strepitoso whisper of who I thought you were, who I hoped you thought I was and what we were to each other, lost between the notes, somewhere in the silence.

xoxo

M.L. H’art