G# A knot in the piano's walnut hide blinks in time with the slippered foot on the pedals. C# The piano's long tapered toes are decorated in gold finery to tempt the pressing foot to them. E A pair of hands scuttles across its keys and a new voice is birthed. Another pair does a waltz in close, erotic time. Yet a third pair rapes; violently, harshly attacks. The piano loves them all. G# A solitary, harrowing and unnoticed death of neglect and dust can come, even to a piano. C# A spotlight cradles the piano in the cup of its palm; the cabinet grows warm in its stroking touch. It commands the stage like Olivier with the skull. E Only his heartbeat, thumping in his head, rattling the eardrum, penetrates. Still there's music hidden behind stone ears. Only the piano can sense his plight, reach out and shake the music from him, like apples from a tree. G# The piano loves the little girl, even as she smears peanut butter and jelly. Fingerpainting its bony teeth. C# The piano has seen four generations die. One that banged. One that raced. One that danced. And one that caressed. E The piano submits to a tuning like a five-year old submits to a dentist. Not at all. It cries and shrieks and pouts and whines. And in the end, when it has been stretched the perfect distance from C to C, It starts to pull and twist away again. G# The prizefighter piano squats toothless and beaten in the corner of a saloon. Marinated in beer, juicy with rum. And each knife to its cheek, each "Fuck" gouged in blood, is worth the chance to feel strong fingers probe it deep. C# He sits at the piano like a hawk. Beak upturned, lord of all. He sits and performs, and it plays him, plays him for every note, every chord every run. It plays him for all it can. It plays him. E She plays their song, Wrinkled and forgetful hands pushing the piano to remember the tune. She and the piano remember.