PIANO LESSON

Faith Shearin

My eyes open before the sun drops its yolk into the sky

and a girl upstairs is practicing scales. I imagine the arch

of her hand, the way her skirt might pause above the knee.

In the street I hear a victim, a paper cup, a man who talks

physics with a pigeon; a pair of girls blow bubblegum bubbles

at the sky. Perhaps an old woman dreams her childhood

on a park bench while the man beside her decides to leave

his wife. The world is complicated: an open window,

my head pressed to a pillow where I find a tidal action:

so many bodies rolling onto the planet, so many others

turning back. In a café I may someday light a cigarette,

remember the last person who did not love me, open my

mouth to see if it speaks smoke or words. But these days

I wake up wondering: how will I fit all this life in one life?

I need a map, a vocabulary list; I can’t learn the world

fast enough. I want to be like the girl upstairs who has braced

herself before a grand piano and taught her own blind fingers to sing