Composing Notes

I hear you in the other room,
On the old upright piano,
Playing something I had long forgotten,
Perhaps never fully knew,
Like a tune in a dream,
Or a dusty song on the radio-
Invented words are mumbled,
Audible enough to a passerby
To create an illusion,
In the delicate humming,
That you are reminiscing with an old friend,
A secret that has been returned to you,
And your lips caress it carefully,
Knowing full well that they are only sounds.

Or else it's a book that looks familiar,
And you wonder if you've ever read it
In elementary school or if you checked it out of a library
And kept it on a dresser until it was due,
Maybe even a week later, and
All you retain when it slides down the cold metal chute
Is a vague sense of the book jacket,
Embossed letters under dirty plastic sheets,
A single color in a sea of another,
Something about faeries in the summary on the back.
Someone put their blood on paper
And offered it to you,
And you can only remember faeries.

Your ballad tapers off,
And it's pedal, pedal, pedal,
Won't end with a bang,
But in a single plainitive tone
It will die,
And you will have to turn away,
Have to force yourself to believe
That it was no one's blood on paper,
That it's just composing notes.