Soul of Mine

ttT Rosalindae Siegfried he beat pulses in my ears like a fishbowl effect gone wrong, my heart strung up tight in my chest with string. “Don’t be afraid,” he says. It’s dark back here and I feel safe in the shadows. Invisible dust in my lungs, I choke when I catch a glimpse of light seeping underneath the curtain’s edge. I’d rather die than be enveloped in the bright hotness of that crisp light, so I stay where I am. Back against the shimmering tulle and warm velvet hung up on racks with masks and hats close by, their blank faces smiling because they know why I came here to join them. “They’re waiting.” He urges me to come forward. The masks keep smirking. For a moment I think that maybe it won’t be so bad if I feel it. After all, I eventually will have to, and so I should get used to it while the choice to enter its reach is still mine. But then its fingers curl from underneath the curtain, slowly, in tendrils and patterns that flit and flicker with the breeze of a nearby fan. They beckon. I gag on the musky smell within these fabrics and drapes. “You are being ridiculous.” Insulting. The textures seem to consume me further each second. I push against them and walk forward, reaching the curtain itself, and the light shies away from each Mary Jane. Coward. I’ll be fine. My tongue is heavy in my mouth, but I push this from my mind along with the curtain from my view, closing my eyes. I take a breath and they reopen. The applause brings me back to this moment, and the glass prison I’d been hiding behind seems to fade. That’s when I see her waiting for me, exactly where I’d left her, alone, but a presence demanding to be seen—to be admired by anyone who laid their eyes upon her. And it’s now that I realize I don’t need to worry. Not one soul in this auditorium is looking at the player. They are looking at the instrument, anticipating the sound of her melody. I am only the channel to which her music travels through the strings. “You’ve got this.”