Silence

My body grew up around the violin.
I grew around you like a vine, circling you in my embrace. But communion and union don't come easily. We were at first indivisible, but then I started to fight against the join. In that struggle we both became hard and unyielding, except sometimes, late at night, both bewitched by moonlight and the waking dream of darkness, we softened and tenderly embraced, lovers for a minute or an hour. Back in the daylight we renewed our armour once again; each became the Enemy, divided.

At last, a truce was called, and silence came. I chose silence. I stopped my ears; I stopped my heart. And then, after so much silence, after so long, on a day that seemed like all the rest… music was suddenly born - and borne - again. A ripple spreading outward in a still pool.

At the core I'm woven together with this box of wood: fused with its strings and and glue. I'm strung inside: heart - self - voice. At the heart of things I'm part of you; one with the old green forest you hold in your cells. There's an octave in my teeth, a prelude in my fingers, and a fugue in the bones of my toes.

Vertebrae upon vertebrae, bone by bone, stone by stone, we build a shining scale of resonance, resilience, resolution.