the upright piano

Ian Lafontaine

brown as a degraded leaf painted on mud-stained soles, orange and white tabby perched atop, like a pensive crow upon a rain-eroded fencepost not understanding music, but only for the warmth of b minor and a broken pedal that unlit candles reneged, lingering on the clam-mouth lid, warped wicks pointed towards the popcorn ceiling, the owlish spires of a brick cathedral keeping watch of sticky keys, barely misaligned like chess pieces set up rudimentarily for decoration.

an estranged bench hums imitatively of the greenish rug, silenced by the clawed table legs, sinking its footprints into the carpet. una corda’s vibration below the floor like the ghost of a vanished submarine seemingly existing as but noise in the walls, but unknowingly heard by quiet ears on the staircase’s summit eavesdropping on muffled musical meandering colored by the lingering light of autumn that spills through eggshell blinds. bands of dusk glow like pumpkin eyes on the piano-lid illuminating the soft movement of dust above the couch where the black cat lies in innocent idleness, deepening its well into the beige cushion floating upon the ripples of soft mistakes drifting into the echo of some other song.