Sotto Voce

Why won’t you play for me, father?


In the hallway, his music breathes. I sit outside of his door, crossed-legged on the floor, listening to all the things that he says with the instrument. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata creeps from under the door. I am spiralling into it. Into the life that he is creating through each note. It tells me a story. And what is this story that I imagine while I listen to him play? Well, it begins like this…



A beautiful lady with long brown hair and sweet innocent eyes, turns to her partner in bed, but his side is empty. How long has she been asleep for? What time is it? The Warmth from the sun hits the bed and caresses her confused face, comforting her in her worried thoughts for just a moment, until it releases her as she climbs out of bed. And still in a sleepy daze, she floats around the room, her white gown swaying gently from side to side with her movements. If someone was watching her from afar, they would think of her a ghost floating through the bedroom. Maybe there is a part of her that is a ghost, an essence of herself from her past that is following her, haunting her. She opens the bedroom door which provides her with a sense of relief as she smells food coming from downstairs. Is he here still? She rushes down the stairs, her hand gliding down the rail as she spirals down.



He stands in the kitchen, making their breakfast, oblivious to her worries while she watches him with a smile growing, with a tender image of future moments like this questioning what follows her. And she tells him, “I thought you had left already without kissing me good bye”. He turns around with a smile and laughs, not understanding the true sadness she would have felt if he really did leave without kissing her goodbye and she doesn't tell him either. She moves towards him and places her arms around his torso, resting her head on his shoulder. “Do you love me?”, she whispers, her voice attempting playfulness but its solemnity is what makes him look down at her and hold her face into his hands. Her eyes remain still, looking into his. She acts like nothing is there, but something remains, it has been frozen over, and he imagines her eyes as a frozen pond, wondering what has been frozen over on the other side of the ice. And he tries to imagine but cannot quite reach it. Or maybe, she hopes that this is what he is thinking as he looks into her eyes, and that he is angry that something has made her fear the most beautiful thing there is in life; to love and to be loved. And she thinks about the words he had once wrote to her in a letter, ‘You are a woman designed to truly love and to be loved’, and yet, she still waits to hear his answer now, still questioning what is true and isn’t true. He answers her and kisses her. She smiles and walks away, walks back up the stairs, the end of her gown softly kissing each step she climbs up. If someone was watching her from afar, they would think of her as an angel rising over the staircase. But as she places her foot on the last step of the staircase, something inside the frozen water moves ever so slightly and she floats back to the bedroom, now looking like the ghost. 



And that is how my story ends. I listen as he closes the piano. I hear him breathing. The last notes fade in the hallway, until it no longer exists, like it never happened, only inside me, frozen over.