This poem might never have been written

…
, were it not for a message
from a distant friend:
Hey! Thought of you! Check it out!
(insert link to poetry challenge here.)

Sure, she’d dabbled. Had inky fingers
all her life. Seasons of indigo flow.
Teenaged angst, divorced diatribes,
the occasional decent trial and error
of keys. But no practice. Now,

she dons it like a habit,
a black
(clacked)
on white
robe, a weeping
willow shade, a
s t r e t c h i n g
of fingers as important
as that of lungs. She’s familiar

with flutter, the utter
nonsense of speaking in tongues
that requires no sound,
only voice
and the choice to bruise
and bash and batter herself
against the ebony thrones
of sometimes unlockable keys.

And sometimes,
in the scars
in the stars
in the surface of the moon
in the silence:
a small and quiet knowing,
and the whisper of wings.

 

 

…
Written for Toads. 

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