The Piano

Once,
A lifetime time ago,
I could sing, and I lived for my song.

But,
I sing no more.
She left me, she who sung with me-
With her articulate musical fingers upon my keys,
Together, we were beautiful.
She pushed me across the sand, as far as my wheels would go-
Before they filled with sand and refused to move.
I stayed on that beach, on a sand bank;
High above even the strongest waves.
No-one came, no-one saw me.
My life thereafter was a broken world of memory,
And every thought reflected her elegant hands.
In the twilight of my first night before the sea,
I sung a mournful sound,
Created by a gull perched upon my keys;
Its' webbed, scabby feet giving birth to a tragic parody of music.
There is nothing more sad than my putrefied silhouette against the setting sun.
The sea gathered itself inside of my heart and,
Like that of a hollow shell-
The sound of its' breath echoed within me.
With time my legs sank into the sand, my chest began to warp;
I became one with the beach.
Occasionally the rain would fall,
And I would cry out discordantly as the droplets hit my ivory teeth,
the strings and hammers of my voice had rotted away-
I had forgotten how to sing.
The bones of my chest stand exposed,
Like the hulking corpse of a clean-picked whale;
The wind echoes mournfully in the hollows of my body-


Now even my song has rotted away.