The words deserted him one more time. Neither the first nor the last time in his life, I guess. The girl child was playing with the keys of an old piano while he was pouring two cups of sweet hot tea. The red and blue cups looked pretty on the top of the piano where he had placed them... or at least so I had thought.
He looked outside the window. It was a cloudy day.
'Where have you been?' he asked.
'Here and there' the girl replied 'more there than here. I got lost in the invisible forest and it did take me a while before I became myself again. I had to pick up the pieces that tore off my skirt and stitch them together again. It feels different now. Same skirt but different feeling. It feels odd to be seen again and to know that I am looking and being looked at as well.
I once dreamt of the eyes looking at me as I was dreaming of that house among the thousand trees by the lake. I had even thought that I found that house, but it flew away with the first blow of the wind. I was invisible then so even those eyes could only look past through me. I was a word, a sound but not a person. I was an image of someone I had wanted to become. A painting and a word in a book that would remain unfinished.
But I am here now. With eyes that see and are seen, with words that speak and are heard and with hands that give life to all those broken things that others throw away.
And you? How have you...' she said lifting her chin up to look him in the eyes... but he was not there and suddenly she was not a child but a strong woman sitting by the table with a cat in her lap and a cup of tea next to her. She was a writer now putting last punctuation marks into a book that she had written years back about a boy who had nothing, about the magic house of a piano player and about a girl who fell in love with an image of a boy whom she met at the oasis in the middle of a desert.
And as she was putting the last full stop there I got up. And then I began to live
He looked outside the window. It was a cloudy day.
'Where have you been?' he asked.
'Here and there' the girl replied 'more there than here. I got lost in the invisible forest and it did take me a while before I became myself again. I had to pick up the pieces that tore off my skirt and stitch them together again. It feels different now. Same skirt but different feeling. It feels odd to be seen again and to know that I am looking and being looked at as well.
I once dreamt of the eyes looking at me as I was dreaming of that house among the thousand trees by the lake. I had even thought that I found that house, but it flew away with the first blow of the wind. I was invisible then so even those eyes could only look past through me. I was a word, a sound but not a person. I was an image of someone I had wanted to become. A painting and a word in a book that would remain unfinished.
But I am here now. With eyes that see and are seen, with words that speak and are heard and with hands that give life to all those broken things that others throw away.
And you? How have you...' she said lifting her chin up to look him in the eyes... but he was not there and suddenly she was not a child but a strong woman sitting by the table with a cat in her lap and a cup of tea next to her. She was a writer now putting last punctuation marks into a book that she had written years back about a boy who had nothing, about the magic house of a piano player and about a girl who fell in love with an image of a boy whom she met at the oasis in the middle of a desert.
And as she was putting the last full stop there I got up. And then I began to live
