Poems

The Player (The Musician)

He played me like life was an orchestra.
I should've known better to have loved a musician.
All he's ever known was how to play things: instruments, games, people.
I was his cello-because God knows that's the only thing about me that every intrigued him.

And I let him graze my silver strings with his reckless hands because resonating earthy tones on a mahogany stage with cardinal colored curtains was better than collecting dust in my charcoal case.
Because being loved by the wrong person was better than never being loved at all.
Bells of warning should've gone off in my head when the woodwind specialist strung my chords with ease; him knowing the sweet spots on my neck in mere seconds-that I haven't even discovered about myself by myself for in decades-all the while claiming I was his first and favorite set of string.

My world started turning, orbiting backward on the day he held me with callouses on both hands-including his right hand (the bowing hand) that never touched my strings. And I wondered what else could have made his hands this way?

He stopped glancing at me from across the room like I was no longer worth his time. I'd have to throw myself into his line of view to get his attention. Every time he'd drop something around me I'd chime in desperation, crying out for his attention even if the object he dropped hadn't hit me. I went out of my way in every aspect in hopes that he'd touch me again because all I ever wanted was to be held. But I was the one that leaned against his shoulder. I was the one that brushed his back, his arms, his hands with my fingertips. He shouldn't have taken me home from the music store if he hadn't wanted any of it. I don't know if it is worse that I was something to pass his time, or something he once wanted but quickly (and wrongly) decided I wasn't enough.

One day, he brought me back to his house after a show and there was a guitar. This surprised me. She was straight from the the factory: glossy, lightweight, untuned and undiscovered territory. I was going on my second year: I was durable and I had finally found my voice, mature sound, and my shine. I thought he'd favor familiarity, dependability, and consistency over mysterious, enticing, and new. After-all why would I believe differently; he named me his favorite. I had finally found out the cause of his other callouses.

She was clothed in his favorite cloth and placed on a pedestal closest to him. And he'd stare at her the way (and as much) as he used to stare at me-from across the room, I felt bad like I was wrongly stealing peaks of a vision right in front of me even when he displayed it in public. But her standing position was always angled away from him-she never looked at him back the way he took her every aspect in. She never memorized the way he walked as he was leaving; and I wondered how her heart didn't sing and vibrate (her two more strings than me) to conduct him a beautiful symphony. My mind was always racing with melodies and my body was always craving to sing the harmonies. I questioned how he had to wrap his arms around her because she never reached for him. (And now, looking back, I can only laugh hysterically because he should know how it hurts to be in the same shoes as me.)

I watched him stop going to the orchestra. And I knew it was because of her: she was a guitar; she didn't belong there (with the violins, drums, and trumpets). So he took her to places he never took me: weddings, concerts, the park. He only ever took me to the concert hall, a place I could only ever be on my best behavior. That's how he liked me: on my best manners, in my best dress, in my best mood. He liked her: in her rawest form, in her comfy clothes, in her any-moment attitude.

He put me out on a stand (on display) and that was somehow worse than the case. Because after I was behind glass, people came to admire me but he never did- content either the fact that someone else would provide me with attention. Everyone could see I had made myself a part of him like an arm is connected to a shoulder but he was only tied to me by a string of yarn (and he always carried around scissors). And the worse part was that no one could reach me behind the invisible barrier. At night I was left with the reflection of sunlight off the moon and fingerprints of people on the glass.

And how ironic that he try's to defend himself by reminding me I'm a cello. He says 'you are an instrument: you were made to be played.'