Sora-Seraph

Josh’s hands, showing me how to do my piano practice.

Today we stood out in the sunshine after my lesson, near the train tracks and the construction and dirt. He opened his arms - like he was about to fly - and let me lean in for a hug. I remember his red shirt was glowing in the sunlight. I wanted to press my cheek against the hollow of his chest. I wanted to stay there. I only let myself for a second. I thought about kissing him. I think about kissing him all the time.

We sit thigh-to-thigh on the piano bench, close enough that I can smell the minty gum he’s chewing or the warm smell of his skin. He has the most beautiful skin, deep nut-brown all year round. I love to watch the fine tendons in his hands pulling muscle and bone into flight. I want to kiss the undersides of his wrists. I want his long fingers in my hair, on my cheek, shivering over my neck. I want him to slide them into my mouth.

Today I was so hungover when I got to my lesson that I stumbled walking into the warehouse. He gently stroked between my shoulder blades to steady me, so light and fleeting it felt like the sun on my back. I remember thinking it was the first time he has ever touched me, instinctively, away from the piano.

When I come in for lessons he lights the frankincense candle I poured for him. He makes me coffee and plays me Chopin and tells me that to really play Brahms you have to believe in Brahms like Jesus, believe in him with a fervor, believe the notes like a second coming. We talk about Beethoven’s lovers who he maybe never even loved, and Mozart’s dad who showed him off like a trained monkey and beat him when he got the notes wrong. Sometimes when the pressure gets to be too much I get the notes wrong and cry. He hands me tissues and tells me I’m brave for trying something new.

He has three daughters who play piano, a wife who won’t even try. I think about them every time we sit on the padded black leather bench and I have the crazy urge to put a hand on his cheek and turn his face towards mine, take his lower lip between mine and lick my way into his mouth. I want to kiss the hollow of his throat and suck on his neck. I want him to wind those long fingers into my belt loop and slide me between his legs. My back against his chest. His hands playing for both of us.

He makes me feel drunk on warm cherry wine. I spend a lot of our time laughing and trying not to think about the tall warm tousled married man sitting two inches away, breathing the same air as me, teaching me chords, writing notes between the lines of my music, listening intently to me play.

I spend a lot of our time together with my hands pressed between my thighs, far far away from him. For safety. For fear. I will not ruin this. I will not ruin this fragile lovely good thing.

Thank you all so much for your love and support and belief in my writing.

It's crazy to me - I'm seventeen! And this is a community of professional artists. If I couldn't fathom that I got my first DD, you better believe I'm floored by this one!

But regardless, many many many thanks. I write for you!

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

-- Louise Erdrich

There are better things waiting for this boy
who is just becoming a brother,
but I could not help believing in the future.

Thank you to Halatia for the feature of Herstory as a Daily Deviation, and to all of you for sharing your opinions, stories, thoughts and kind words. I appreciate you all more than you know!