Triad

Student

Leisurely, you stretch upon the sofa like a cat who’s settling into her napping position. You drape yourself upon the furniture any old way. You lack inhibition when you are here, with me. Your thoughts flow a steady stream of articulation, relaxed releasing. Your eyes are wide open windows--I can see all the possibilities. You are glass spun of the sun, and I behold you with care. You trust. Childlike conception of interaction. Student, you are a teacher.

Tremor

I was finishing up after my shower in the bathroom when a Chopin etude burst from the round radio sitting on the sink. It pounded forth, angrily at first, seizing me by the scruff of my shirt and shaking me. The pianist was racing through the typical Chopin scales, creating layers of light and dark and pouring waves of expression, rolling sound against me like the tide of the ocean, pushing yet pulling me closer. I turned it up, welcoming the increasing vibrations, and switched off the light. I sat in the darkness and Chopin rumbled like a thunderstorm, intense and yet immensely comforting--the piano showering notes like steady, even rain.

Sanctuary

Solitude snatched me when she didn’t notice. When she was gathered up in a wave of bodies and faces… and I wasn’t included. Loneliness struck a deep, deep chord, a chord that refused not to vibrate down within me, folding everything within upon it.

But then there were the rosary beads. He lifted them triumphantly, with his eternal half grin--the one that made his eyes into wrinkled silts--holding up the first wooden rosary. I took it gently, reverently. Immediately, it felt like it belonged in my hand. I had yearned for its soft touch before I knew it. And then we began, and the prayer poured from within me. The steady rhythm struck the uneven vibration away.