Eight years of my life was leeched by the machine. Every piece of that contraption was seared into my mind. How it worked, every button, hole, and screw. Imprinted into my fingers after every use. I hated it. The whining noise I turned into melody, the complexity of the symbols needed for its usage, and of course the blatant fact I had ignored every year. No matter how many times I perfected each and every sheet of song, no matter how much time and breath I wasted to make the machine perfect, it was never heard above the bigger contraptions. I had mastered a machine that was never heard. I showed it off for those eight years. Concert after concert I stood with the machine and swore to it I would make it be heard, and I failed each and every time. I blamed my bitterness not on the machine or myself, but on disappointment. Resent for a family that never came to my concerts, and when they did they would just smile. They couldn't hear the machine, they couldn't hear me. We transferred a silent truce of regret from their eyes to mine as I gave the machine my lungs in an effort to reach them. One concert I thought it would change, I promised the machine it could do it. Take my breath, take my fingers, take my mind. Be heard for once, make me proud. I had thought it suceeded, my father giving me his focus, his gaze unwavering. After the machine no longer needed my breath, after the song was over and all of the other machines were tucked safe in boxes and trunks, I went to him. I held the machine in my hand as he knelt down to me and talked in a steady voice. It took a while to register that I had failed yet again to be heard. My melody had remained silent, and the machine's dissatisfaction radiated through me. I ignored it. The news was different. I was leaving in a week, and I would leave behind all that I had known. My friends, my school, my home, all left behind. He got a new job, we moved, and I never played the flute again. Though unreasonable, I still believe that things wouldn't have turned out as so if it wasn't for that cursed machine.
