truce » poetry

c major

c major.

the simplest key, the most effortless. tell any pianist, "c major" and their hands will fall without a thought onto the keys, light and loving as the brush of a butterfly's wing on skin.

c major.

i have only now realized it but when i play c major and close my eyes, i see an orange that leans into yellow like young boys at the end of a summer day. it sounds open and square, but if you hold the sustain pedal, it turns into an oval; versatile, like many experts can argue.

but now. oh, now. that moment that seems to last forever when it only serves as the doorstop between past and future, now.

ask me to play c major now and my fingers trip on their descent to the keys. there is nothing graceful, nothing right. and if i do play the chord perfectly, then it will be out of tune - even on my electric keyboard, and those are perpetually in tune.

ask me to play c major now and the very thought of obliging leaves that taste in my mouth - that taste that goes with my echoing head and chest, the sliding, uneasy feeling of broad daylight and hiding from the sun. which, incidentally, is also c major.

ask me to play e flat major. i like e flat major, i like storms and far-off thunder and choking, charcoal clouds. i like the electric bruise of the sky as the lightning dances. but i cannot play e flat major, either.

because something stares at me from the corner every time i sit down at the piano, even when i slip the headphones over my ears. it could be myself; if i am good at one thing, it is deconstructing everything i have ever worked to build, pushing over my carefully stacked tower of hope and beliefs and aspirations until i lay in the crumbling mess of someone i'll never be.

so yes, the thing in the corner is most likely myself. and when i sit down, it sews itself into my skin and the doubt and the criticism and the self-inflicted inferiority comes with it and i find that i cannot even play a simple c major chord.

because c major is effortless and orange-yellow and the sun, but c major is also happiness.