Piano Song
They always talked about her hands
Weighed down by a wedding band
All the lines he couldn’t understand
How she was elegant like you
She had an octave plus two
You asked to play the ivories
Hands shaking on the keys
Weighed down by your disease
They wouldn’t move the way you wanted to
Can't hold onto what you're bound to lose
And as the final weeks of august came
Haunted as the keys decayed
Through our fingertips we felt you fade
And the dreams came with the night
The hopes of black and white
Every wrong move that we made
Was just a half step away
My hands tremble beneath your weight
All the melodies that they could make
All the memories of past mistakes
How we covered them in glue
Peeled it off until our skin was smooth
When all that's tangible keeps us apart
Im weighed down by your phantom heart
Hold my chest the way you used to
Just to remind it what to do
And like the ghost at the end of your bed
Who waited until we left
Left your body when she took your hand
Did it feel the way it used to
Did you lighten as she lifted you
And the dreams came with the night
The hopes of black and white
Every wrong move that we made
Was just a half step away
There was a song that my mom would always play on the piano until she could no longer push the keys. After she passed, I learned to play it on the guitar, and years later, my sister and I wrote this song to the melody. The Piano Song tells the story of my mother and the mystery in the grey space between the ebony and ivory. I was told my great-grandmother also played the piano until her husband wouldn’t let her. As little kids, my parents always talked about our hands, the potential we had to play, and what our reach would be on the keys. They pushed us to play the piano, knowing the world that opens when you connect with an instrument. The Piano Song is my journey into that world, where time dissolves, between life and death, black and white. The space between where my mother now exists, a place I too can visit through song.
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