Playing Piano

By Dion O'Reilly

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I have no great fluency, but I love the cloud-sounds
the chords make when I push the una corda pedal, 
the strange power of the black keys, every note,
a little person with a head—empty or full. I love
the confidence of the right hand and the shady
misgivings of the left, the practice pieces
I’ve tried, for years, to master. This time, I’m also 
lying in my unwashed bed, listening to Sister 
attempt “Für Elise” for the twentieth time. With every
discordant note, my mother knocks her off the bench—
The smack, the fall, the cry, then a faulty “Für Elise.” 
On and on. This is how she taught us
to ride bikes, wash dishes, weed the endless lawn. It’s how
she drilled spelling, forced hotel corners. It’s how
I learned to look in the mirror, my ugliness working her up
for the next gut-punch, the next backhand to the head. It’s a miracle I love 
piano, love to sing, love how it lifts me, most of the time, from my dark 
churn of thoughts. I wait till no one’s home in case I break 
when I get it wrong, or even when I get it right. There it is 
again, the same blunt fist, the same ritual 
of excoriation, the same aching crescendos and adagios 
in every imperfect song I won't stop playing. 

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Dion O'Reilly is the author of Sadness of the Apex Predator, Ghost Dogs, and Limerence, a finalist for the John Pierce Chapbook Competition, forthcoming from Floating Bridge Press. Her work appears in The Sun, Rattle, The Slowdown, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a podcaster at The Hive Poetry Collective, leads poetry workshops, and is a reader for Catamaran. She splits her time between a ranch in California and a residence in Bellingham.

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