His Divine Music

 Marilyn loved the piano, the sweet sounds of ivory hitting strings hitting the air, vibrating at the perfect frequency to make a human feel connected to the universe, connected to God’s divine instrument for designing His universe.

She had tried them all, or well plenty of them. Guitar, harp, theremin, zither, sitar. She had traveled far and wide and tried and tried. But it was the piano that spoke to her. Of a loving God and the embrace of melodious miracles that were always there to be heard. It is an instrument of course, a piano is a way to live through the music of the world.

Yet something wasn’t entirely there that night. Years of practice had taught her a lot, covering her fingers with callouses, making her wrists ache with the tension of hours upon hours of practice, until her fingers were stiff with the joyful soreness of training. But she had learned above all when the one out of tune was herself. Disconnected with that divine frequency, body and soul elsewhere. Because when Marilyn was out of tune she was out of place, in body as well as in spirit.

With a mournful sigh she let go of the keys, put down the lid and moved through the house, sadness grappling her heart with an unspeakable sorrow. Her weeping became sobbing, became wailing. She was like a wounded widow that had gone to war, her husband dead and buried. With no funeral rites to speak of and had now been forced to join the war to be maimed in his stead.

Marilyn was naught but sorrow and pain, her fingers made to tickle the white keys that opened the universe could not connect and bring forth that divine song that was in all songs. For she could learn the sheets and play them, but they had nothing of the holy spark that the Lord had given her, nor any other human willing to play that gifted music.

She wailed, like a mother without her children, like a dying pet in need of her Master. She felt the world around her change as she did, door into wall into window into room. A bed that would not welcome her, for she did not deserve any rest, failing to accomplish what she lived for. She deserved the punishment yet resented it either way, for she did not want the pain, she wanted to play.

Then she heard it again, and for a moment she felt the light of the lord come back to her. She felt joy, wonder, like a child playing in the fields of her home.

She flew to the piano, knowing the Lord had been kind enough to remind her of her passion, of her talent, her divine gift that He’d been so kind to give her.

But joy became anger as she saw the usurper on her chair, that young boy barely four years old that had thought himself disgustingly worthy to play the music that she was meant to play. He was so young, so naive, inexperienced, soft, disrespectful to the craft. His fathers had shielded him from the harshness of the world, nothing at all like the cruelties she witnessed.

She flung herself to him, wailing like a scorned madwoman, and the child predictably screamed, ran to his father’s office, and while he cried his other father came running in, both men desperate to aid their scared child.

That would be enough, for now. It would put the child in his place, make the fathers worry enough to, with some luck, lock away that which was rightfully hers. Back when she had the means to play it, when the world was not so unkind to her to deny her the chance to touch, to feel, to hear.

She would play the piano again, would invoke the divine music the Lord had written upon the wretched world that rejected her now. And she would feel her fingers become solid again, pressing down on the keys and tearing the melodious sounds out of the air that made her now. She would live again in her music.

Or she would wail until no one could hear anything else.

• A new one! So sorry, this time I properly banished, been working and going through a lot of stuff. But I decided to focus on things I want to write, so when I do I'll post them here! Less consistency but more delight. Who knows, perhaps some day I'll be in a position were consistency will be necessary lol so for now, we just enjoy!