511

The sun glazed the ground, paved it with a careful luster that I feared my footsteps would disrupt. My feet, whose only protection had frayed and failed them and had chosen to limply retire on the pavement several miles back, slapped the hot stones beneath them. New blisters bloomed on skin already red and engorged in agitation. Yet still I walked on, the fierce heat bearable (made gentle, almost) only because of my destination.

I stopped without lifting my eyes from the ground, knowing that exactly five hundred and eleven evenly-spaced steps had brought me to his door. The room was small, but not crowded. The window was streaked with grime and signs of age, which lent it the appearance of being slightly wrinkled, like saran wrap, something that was meant to be smooth but never quite got there. That the glass existed was simple enough, but it manipulated me, giving birth to depths that might have been illusive; mere tricks of light intent on dancing around what was actually beneath them. I could see through the window, but not completely.

His long hair was sensitive to his body's motions, first hanging hesitantly over his ears, then perking up and bobbing quickly and erratically, like stormy ocean waves. The piano keys rippled in flashes of black-and-white, at the mercy of his fingers. His mouth settled into a crescent, the half-moon shape broken only when his lips parted noiselessly. Ribbons of light curled from his eyes and reached towards the window, and my hand instinctively shot out, prepared to catch them. My fingers grasped thin air instead, the same air I listened to as I watched him. I inched closer to the glass, knowing that no matter how close I got, I wouldn’t be able to hear the music. But that knowledge never stopped me from trying.

(word count: 305)