I keep holding out for the right person to come around and make me thankful I never wasted my time before. I’m starting to think they’re going to show up and I’m going to resent them for not coming sooner.

The black paint chipped piano rings clashing with the music playing from my ear buds. There’s a heaviness in my stomach and an ache in my heart. His voice calls to me, so faint it is almost a whisper. Still, I am wondering if I could run to him. The kids are loud. I say kids, but really we are all just kids. I just happen to be quiet right now. I don’t want to be quiet. The volume of my music raises, each bar, each ticking mark, increasingly blocking out the world around me. His voice hurts but is so beautiful, like his touch. I wonder if knows this dichotomy the way I do. The way it echoes in your skull, the grand room of your body, empty. It sounds like the cries of your mother the day your brother died and your best friend’s breath when she tells you what that boy did. His memory is a haunting reminder of what there is to be destroyed, what can be lost. Yet, I want to remember. I want his voice to be tuned to my brain, to narrate the world around me. It’d be so much more pleasant. I wonder if he wonders. I have to. It’s inalienable. They say it was nothing. They say I’m strong. Maybe I was. How can one person destroy you and give you life? He’s a mortal, no god. The kids laugh. That’s what we kids are supposed to do. I smile, consciously, because smiling doesn’t come naturally these days. Their faces are bright and fresh. Who loves them? Do they know what they could loose? Do they think the way I think? The higher the high the lower the low. My brother told me this. His hand was on my shoulder, the regular quiver sending a hum through my body, from above like an angel, his voice the same as always, he told me how he was scared, scared of the lows. Is this a low? Sitting here, surrounded by life and art yet feeling ten feet under. Premature death in the name of living. Living is harder than they tell you. Living is like playing the black piano. Beautiful, so beautiful, when you do it all right. I was never never good at playing piano, or loving people. You see, loving leaves me empty in my heart too. Loving leaves me hallow like a cave or a grand room. High ceilings are majestic until you still feel closed in despite them.

He pitted my heart as if he was scooping out seeds from a pomegranate.