"Garage Band of Survivors"

All I Could Hear Was the Harmony after the feedback fades The basement always smelled like dust and secrets, old amps humming even when they were off. Your mother’s voice — a soprano lost in static, your father — a snare drum too quick to snap. We tuned ourselves around them, played softer when he drank, louder when she cried. You learned to strum apology in D minor, I kept time tapping lies on the floor. Cousins came with out-of-key laughter, uncles brought distortion pedals of opinion, aunties kept rhythm with casseroles and guilt. No one rehearsed, but we all knew the parts. I remember you soloing grief under the stairs, the way you clutched silence like a microphone. Someone should’ve turned down the reverb on the things we weren’t allowed to say. We were a garage band of survivors, no gigs, just family dinners. No lyrics, just coded glances. And when the final chorus came — when they divorced, or died, or just stopped showing up — no one knew if we were better off unplugged. Still, sometimes I hear a riff in a dream, something half-remembered from the bridge, and I wonder if you ever finished the song we started in between the screaming.