Piano Music
Piano Music
September 01, 1996
| A flag at half-mast, tissues piled in the OR lounge, the hallway gasps: What were his risk factors? No one dared say it out loud, how we tallied our own frailties, clear for an instant, like skywriting before a wind. |
| On the day he could not know would be his last, he traced healing scars with eye and fingertip, cut new wounds with clean hands, alive with the snap of latex gloves, the precise steel scalpel and rongeur. Between cases, he confided in me: a wish to learn piano, an instrument where the choices are black and white. And he laughed as he ate a peach, the sugary juice glistening on his hand, his tongue tasting each scrubbed finger. I don't know who he touched between the pleasures of a peach and the call to 9-1-1, what music he heard as he waited. |
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