Tuning Fork

For decades your piano was tuned every year, religiously. The same man would come with his fork and play and tighten and after he was done we'd have to take off our shoes before we could practice our scales in your second living room. I'd play many things, nervously, but that was years ago and I hardly touch a keyboard now. She is the age I was with the same longing fingers, but without my nervous twitch. She bangs, no matter who's around, and the dissonance rattles each string. Her sound, absorbed into the oriental rug, calls for a tarnished tuning fork, as if each key were constructed, from the facetted bones of the Easter Bunny or Boogie Man.