seams and stitching ♡ published

MUSIC

1.
it's surprising, really, that his ears can
still recognize the sound of music
even with abuse still ringing in his battered eardrums--
he is thousands of miles, an ocean away, from that godforsaken
island and yet he still walks in
circles of sound waves in his psyche.
his foot steps are mere echoes of
memory, he cannot create a new
sound of his own, every noise he
produces is just a repetition of
the melancholy melody that pulses
in his bloodstream--
my grandfather is hard of hearing
so it surprises me when he sings
along to this music.

2.
when my mother was a girl,
she would sit on the floor
of the living room with grandfather
by her side--their ears tuned in
to opera playing on the radio.
they would close their eyes,
gathering dust as they sat, forever,
it seemed, waiting for the voices
to tend to their wounds.
my mother was a girl with blotches
and bruises and a heart sewn
together with symphony stitches.
my grandfather was a man
with red knuckles and rough skin
and a sanity stapled together with
plainsong pushpins. those
opera afternoons kept them whole,
pulled them together, in rhythm
with their heartbeats--until the
voices withered in the static
and they unraveled in the silence.

3.
this music, you see, is a lifeboat.
an escape-route. a trap-door, a
flashback, the preface and the
epilogue, the bridges we build
over the gaps in our souls--we use
these healing harmonies to mend
our broken melodies, we use these
lyrics like gauze and bandages,
we use these cadences
to pump rhythm back into our pulse.
we will sing--to fill these silent voids--
until our throats are raw.
and even then, we will piece our
bodies back together and
dance to the memories
playing in our heads.