Elegie Op. 3 No. 1

You should really try to play, I said. I stared into the alluring black and white keys. The room was unusually quiet, but there was the soft tapping of my fingernails on its cool and cold frame. I bet you would be incredible. 

No, she replied with a terse smile and stared at me. Her fingers longingly caressed the keys with a slow and careful measure. They strained to stay away from its beautiful splendor. 

Her smile was not one of pleasure. Her lips grimaced with unfortunate wrath. With her thin, rigid elbows and her ebony eyes, her eyes were like the leftover charcoal after a fire burned out. Brown, like the writhing and living Earth, but not so alive. They were black. They commanded death.

Or was it life? Sometimes, white is worn in the presence of death, sculpts and shrouds the body in a way that defines your starkest features. White is the color that is full of all colors. It is a color that has taken a liking to all the colors in the world. It is the stars in our veins. It is pure because it has everything, and proffers absolutely nothing. Black is a color that is devoid of all colors. It overwhelms everything in the world. If I stood at the edge of life and summoned death, would he really be draped in robes of black? Is death when we have everything but nothing at the same time? 

She will be beautiful, they said, patting my shoulders as though I was the one in need of comfort. She will be beautiful? She was exceedingly beautiful from the moment that she rose pridefully out of the womb. Her fingers, weary with age, could weave our hearts as though she had knitted for a hundred years, that could make drops of water burn, and capture the enchanting excitement of all those around her. Beyond it, the beauty of her soul outshined even the brightest of stars, even the greatest of the cosmos. 

But where is it? I still cannot find her. Even though the vast lenses of science search and search, I cannot find her. The sun burns bright, and she may glow brighter. She burns with the unshakingly, desperate desire to be an artist who can conquer all the souls she addresses. She unravels the complexity of human beings and draws in the emotions as though it is as natural and simple as eating or drinking. Yet, it is as though her beauty had been used and merged with the vast and endless cosmos itself. 

52 white keys and 36 black keys. They merge together in unison. Maybe it is impossible to conquer death if the thin lines of life and death are one. Sometimes I can feel the cold and fluid sand shifting, disappearing from under my unsteady feet. Sometimes I taste the bitter poison of some unfinished resolve, the taste of ashes and coal, wood chips, and bruised mangoes. Sometimes I hear the delicate, painted pine wood straining from under all the weight of my fingers, which play my pieces and carry my years. They are heavy with my fears and my burden. 

And sometimes, I can hear my meager muscles creaking under the lives I will never live. I can hear her cry: I beg you earnestly, atone me, release me, for what I have done in vain, what I have conceived compared to what I have promised is so unforgivable. When she looks at me with those ebony eyes, those eyes that desperately reach for life and death concomitantly, those eyes that seem to be omnipotent, does she also detect my heart shattering and crumbling into ashes? If I could, would I take it all away in an instant and face the ominous knives that remind me of her beautiful smile and glistening teeth?

I wish to see her, and I will anxiously wait for her dim return. She is the sun, and when it sets, she will be a phoenix. Over the pale sky, the light of fireflies, the moon waxes, and wanes. It cries anxious, jealous tears, and slowly dissolves into her, and melts into a silver, creamy, waxy current that smoothly pools eternally upon her grace. It flows gently through the clear holes in her hands and feet, circling the red fruits. Those long, fleeting fingers can no longer dare to touch the very music she had once loved so enormously before. She was an angel that had fallen into shameful disarray. It must have been the one to cause her eventual exile. 

And as for me, under the endless teeming branches of the sun, where the white sea foam and charred forest clash, immersing with the water, I will endure. I will pray towards the oblivious and complacent sun, daring to just breathe near the very edge of her terrifying silence. The body that lays in a coffin of her undead desires. I will recall her ebony black eyes that once burned with never-ending passion, slender and fragile arms, and efficacious soul, whose delicate yet firm beauty surpassed even the most ethereal of the heavens. 

Where the just beings defy the concepts of life and death itself, please, accept her. Please tell me that she now rests in the arms of the stars and the other suns, somewhere far removed and serene. Do not tell me why you took her so soon. But show me why they all call you fair! She will shroud your home in brilliant light and become the sun that flowers in vitality once again. Maybe there, she can be the artist without the instrument's old bones creaking with her need for amends. She will weave the course of time and change her forlorn path. Indurate her heart so nothing can subdue her incredible and unmatched passion and take her far away to her genuine home. 

Play me Elegie. It will be as alluring, endearing, yet deceiving, as her perpetual silence. It will move even the deepest beds of the Earth. And once her atonement is complete, the holes filled, and the glassy river thoroughly dried, I will join too. The shimmering silver bells will twinkle and gather in masses underneath my eyelids, and they will sing along as well. They will conduct a song of the most desperate, solemn grief and heartbreak.