Piano

She is playing the piano again. Her fingers find familiar notes and my ears prick up, though I do not look. Cannot look. She plays the song I do not - cannot - listen to and I want to cry.

Because of your words and hate I grew to hate a song I adored. When our song comes on I have to turn it off or run. My brain enacts the flight or fight rule, and more often than not I run like I always have done. We took a song we loved alone and loved it together. I learnt to play it for you as well as for me. Even though it was my weakest piece you still claimed to love it.

After we broke apart, like the meteorites that fly together for a few months then leave for the dizzying emptiness and blackness of space, I stopped playing the piano altogether. My social life is like their space: I wander lonely like a cloud, trying to ignore things that remind me of us, what we had. So when my friend plays our song, I do not tell her why it makes me sad. I just tell her that it hurts deep inside, and she knows not to ask further.

She hasn't stopped playing our song. I haven't stopped listening.