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She called because she wanted to hear my voice. She laughed with her friends in the background and made jokes that I scoffed at. She talked innocently about her plans for the next day and I interrupt her to seek pity over a dreaded exam. Seek pity over owing them money. I heard her change in an instant. She turned quiet, just like he does when he realizes nothing he can say will get me out of where I am; where I have put myself. I hear my voice. The tone so familar. The same tone I have used for so many years so many times and hated each time I've heard it from my mouth. It's as if it controls me when it begins. Monotonous. Careless; despite what I'm feeling is exactly the opposite. We hang up and I continue to study for my impending exam. Only to realize I am just staring blankly in front of me. I start to cry. Not a tear, but a cry. I wanted to call her back and tell her I love her, but I didn't. I couldn't. I could have, but I didn't. I suddenly felt like that was the last time I would ever speak to her. I realize I didn't call back because I was afraid of her hearing me cry. I've always been afraid of my cry being heard, despite it happening (at the most inappropriate times). It shouldn't matter. Especially with her. I don't want her to think there is anything wrong. I just want to tell her that I love her before she boards the plane tomorrow. But I know, if I call back, I will cry. I remember the night before he was to leave for a trip to Florida. I was overcome with feeling like I would never see him again and I wrote him an immensely long letter; trying to explain my teen angst and despite it all, I do care. I remember him later writing me a letter back explaining how amazed he was at how articulate and eloquently I expressed myself. We spoke silently for months with only words, ending his always with Keep those cards and letters coming, until one day I didn't. I didn't stop thinking about it, but once a year came and went, I felt silly starting again.

She deserves a letter.

I don't feel much different now, except that I have lost some of my fearlessness (or most of it)
somewhere along the way.

small animals

I am so nervous, I am nervous every week. I don't have music to listen to or books to read. Just the thoughts in my head and the churning guts in my stomach. I get on the streetcar, and notice a little red headed boy, talking loudly to the woman in front of him. He seems really intelligent, but at first I feel annoyed by him. Maybe its because he is so happy. Maybe its because he is a child; free and without obligation. He's eloquent in the way he speaks, and I think at least once he used a word I didn't know the meaning for. The woman in front of him isn't his mother, but I think a few of the other kids are hers. I can't see her face because she is looking at all the children; talking to them but mostly just listening to them.
"Now remember, guys...We can't take all of them."
I wonder if they are going to the Humane Society. We are headed in that direction, after all. I reminisce the utter excitement of going to pick up a new pet. I seem to remember each time so vividly; especially the day my mom told us we were getting a puppy. I remember going to visit him each week before we could take him home because we were so young. I remember the breeders choosing to give them away for free because they loved them so much they couldn't fathom profiting from them. I remember the Siamese kittens when I was five. Ping and Pong. I remember when Ping died she was five. I remember when Pong died. He was twenty. I remember Pong on the day Ping died; I could see in his eyes he was looking for her. He was so lethargic. I remember all of their entries into my life, I remember all of their exits. I think I always will.
"We have to um, look for the smaller ones; the ones that um, look like they need special care!" Says the red-headed boy.
"We can't get anything that look like they are going to have babies," says the woman, "we don't want to be overloaded with hamsters."
I remember the hamsters too.
And the degus. They had babies once, and then their babies had babies. Once, I remember the mother eating one of the babies. I tried to forget that.
"We can't have our place smelling like a zoo," she says, her arm around the girl beside her.
"Sooner or later, you will start to noice a smell, and once you live with that smell you don't smell it anymore. It takes somebody else coming into your house and saying, 'Ew...do you have animals?' You know, there aren't too many moms who would dedicate their lives to housing a hamster colony."
The kids giggle and I start to take note about how nice this woman seems to be. She is so genuinely interested in what each child has to say. That, and she obviously has dedicated her life to a hamster colony for children. The red-headed boy starts to talk about the commercials he's been in.
"Why did you stop doing commercials?" The woman asks, "didn't you like it?
"I did, yeah," says the boy, his words seem rehearsed, like he's in an interview. "But um, it really interrupts your um, daily.....routine?"
"Oh, yes. That's true," she responds, "but you know there are schools here in Toronto that help out kids that are involved in acting, and sports too. Kids that need flexible schedules."
The red-headed boy doesn't seem very interested, and I figure the reason he isn't acting anymore has very little to do with the busy schedule. I understood that feeling. He asked if the school was a "sleep-over school".
The day before my entrance into Senior Kindergarten, I asked my mom if the school was going to make me stay over night. My mom laughed and assured me they wouldn't, but I didn't believe her. I was so afraid to stay over anywhere. I didn't stay away from home without my parents until I was 13. By the time I was 19 it seemed like I wanted to stay anywhere else.
The woman has such a soothing voice, so calm, so maternal. It makes me miss my mom. She assures the boy that its not a sleep-over school.
"and another thing with acting? is um, that it takes up so much of your time and you um, spend all this time trying for an audition and um, you might not even get that----"
"How many stops?" a girl interrupts, the first time I've heard her speak.
"The next one is Caroll, I think? Then we're the one after that!"
They're getting off the streetcar and the red-headed boy asks the girl if she knows what a factorial is.
I don't, I think to myself, and then the boy starts yelling out numbers so I know at the very least it has to do with math, my first inkling.
The girl keeps paraphrasing. I miss being a kid. I remember being five years old and pretending to have homework. I always felt too old for my age but now I feel so young.
I can hear the boy continue his explanation outside the streetcar and I quietly say goodbye to them.

It's quiet now. I'm nervous again.

leaf heart (the epitome of bittersweet)

She said it was just a song, and then I was in her head. It's just a song, but it was much more than that. Its so you. She couldn't possibly realize how much that means. The song clicks and claps and switches and chants and I want to dance. The words are sad, just like the words have been sad before; but accompanied by an enlightening feeling. The kind that makes you want to stare up at the sun in the summertime and just think about how pretty the world is. The kind of feeling that evokes the urge to dance. The kind we have felt together so many times before. I feel so much for her, because I don't ever have to try. What she enjoys about me are the things that bother me. I have had a small handful of these people in my life but never more than one at a time. She loves me. I have no idea why, but if I had to guess, it would have to attribute to the feeling we have shared so many times before. The way we hear things. Sitting on a beach, tears streaming down her face, staring at the open water with a blissful smile smeared across her face. Sharing stories of her father, speaking with such wonder and understanding. With awe, speaking of loss from the other end. Embracing everything we have. As she spoke I looked around to everyone else. Some sat sobbing, others at attention of her words. He was most mesmerizing. I have never seen such a look on his face before. Never seen him so moved by something he couldn't touch himself; something entirely objective to him. I watched them and I listened, writing letters I knew I would never send. Everything is feeling no matter what caused it. Part of him is on that island now. I felt like I could feel him, and I had never seen him before then. As she spread the last of him she would ever touch, she said, This is the last time, and let out a wail of such pain and loss, something I knew (that we all knew) we would someday be feeling ourselves. The leaves formed a heart. We didn't see it until it was all over, but when it was over, we had never felt so alive. We danced in the sand and screamed out our joy. It was as if saying goodbye with her had set us all free.

the most beautiful tune

it sat there in the basement for as long as i can remember. It was there so long I sometimes forgot what it was. It was big, deep brown and boxy, with chipped keys and dents all over. I always loved it, but I didn’t really know why. When I was ten, my mom suggested I take my fascination to organized lessons, and I obliged. Soon enough, I was taking lessons from the woman down the street once a week. I didn’t practice much; I could only get myself to when I enjoyed what I was hearing, which wasn’t often. I loved to sit there, playing the keys. Not making much of anything but still found it more interesting anyway. There was one key, a higher note that was horribly out of tune. You had to press it really hard to get any sound at all, but when you did it was shrill and wobbly, and I decided I would miss it if it were gone.

I was never entirely sure where it came from. I knew that it had been on my mom’s side of the family for years, and years. I am sure if I had asked her she would have been able to tell me. I just never really did. Or I’ve just forgotten. My grandma; my Yaya, (because that’s what she was) always said it had the greatest sound. That its never had to be re-tuned and sounded deeper and resonated louder than anything else of its kind.I don’t know how much of this is fact, but I believed her when she said I would never find another one that carried the most beautiful tune. I always remembered that.

The lady down the street quit teaching. And I quit learning. But still I sat there, playing the keys, hearing the sound. I used to hold the top open; rest it on my head while I played; watched the sound. It was never comfortable, but the watching the insides made me feel like I was feeling it more. I’d always create this temporary dent on the middle of my head from where the cover rested.

It stood there for so long; ten years it stood there. Offering everything it was made for plus a space to hide behind while I spied on my brother and his girlfriend on New Years Eve. Ten years. I never really knew why I was so drawn to it. I just was. Ten years; likely nothing compared to the life it lived before my time. Standing somewhere else. So long before I was even an inkling of a thought in anybody’s head. After the ten years, they told me we were moving. We couldn’t take it with us. I was so sad, but I wasn’t sure why. I just knew I wanted it with me. I remembered what my Yaya said. I just knew no one would love it as much as I did. It was important to her, too.

My mom called relatives, distant relatives. Finally she found a distant cousin that she never knew. She told me that she told her it was important that it stay in the family. That it had a good home. They picked it up the next week. The day the movers came, I sat on the bench. I looked through it; what once held music books and theory lessons, now became the bearer of the trinkets of my life. Photos and drawings. No one would look there; no one ever sat there except for me. I lifted up the front; played the keys one last time. Tried to memorize the sound. The sound I would never hear again. The most beautiful tune.
I carved my name into the inside of the front cover. I can’t remember if I wrote my whole name, or my initials, but it was probably my whole name. Middle name too. I’m not really sure why. I just remember thinking that one day I would see it again, and because my name was carved into it, there would be no question that it was mine, and because it was little kid writing, they’d see that it was mine from a long time ago. Mostly though, I think I romanticized the idea of someone finding my name and it being this huge mystery as to who I was. Years, decades later. I was so fascinated by history in that way. Finding little clues of past lives around. I once found a date and signature of a carpenter on our railing in the house. “This railing was hand made by…” was written with purple pencil crayon under the varnish. It felt like finding a treasure. I wanted to create something like that. I wondered if the carpenter wrote it with that in mind, too.

I looked at the dents, the chipped keys. Played the wobbly note. I hoped the new owners wouldn’t fix it, but I hoped they would love it enough to want to. I missed it already.

It has been seven years since I’ve seen it last. The older I get the more it comes to my mind, the more it comes clearer why I was so drawn to it. I wonder if my name has been seen on the inside. I wonder if they know that it carries the most beautiful tune.

Recently I asked my mom about it. She seemed surprised by my sudden interest but appeared happy to remember. It belonged to my great-great aunt, who was a great-great pianist. Eventually it was passed down to my mom once she bought herself a baby grand. She said she always regretted giving it up because it just carried the most beautiful tune.