Decrescendo

Written By Té V. Smith

  • It’s been a while.

  • A piano fell today. It was a normal day.

  • Woke in time for Fajr,

  • revised a short story,

  • Breakfast for the kids,

  • played

  • laundry,

  • read a short story,

  • Their mom came and took them to bowl

  • A 2-hour Zoom orientation for a fellowship I recently won,

  • Basketball with Miles (I lost)

  • supper,

  • hugs and stories

  • facts I didn't know I needed

  • and then, as if an 80s cartoon rope had snapped...a piano fell.

  • Life went dark and heavy.

  • prayed as the kids roared in and out of laughter in their room.

  • did the breathing exercises my therapist showed me last month, in his office, when a little of his lunch flew out, and I accidentally said “yuck” out loud.

  • queued up my go-to YouTube playlist: RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS.

  • drank water,

  • sat still,

  • A peppermint bath because when pianos fall out of the sky, you feel like you can’t breathe in the right key.

  • I still feel the wood, still hear the diminished chords, and sustain looming on top of me, but the more I remember the glimmers, the more I wiggle free. Even writing this is another wiggle. So is imagining a person struggling with their own version of life’s animated follies, reading this and feeling just a little tad itty bitty teeny bit lighter.

  • With all my heart

    — Té

Té V. Smith https://teiswriting.com
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