Fairydust

The dusty light filters in through the one high window in the door frame
The light lands on the stage floor just before the piano where you and I sit
The piano is what they call a grand piano. I call it a grandmother piano.
She is old and elegant, deeply resonant, with many scratches glimmering on her weathered black polish,
creasing her surface like inky elephant skin
Her ivory keys are slightly chipped but as you gently press her, she sings

I am curled up on the hard stage floor. I breathe in the smell of dust

It is bad for me but I love the sweet resin musk.
The vibrations of the piano travel through the floor and come up through the side of my ribcage and the hands upon which I rest my cheek

You keep plunking away, singing softly. Your voice pours like molasses. I am trying not to listen to you. You're singing out the air, to nobody, the love songs wash away, wasted. Instead, I focus on the words of the grandmother piano

Don't worry about the boy, she murmurs
Let me sing you to sleep, to dreams of love requited

But I can't believe her, I can't quite take her in.
As long as the dust fairies fly in circles, in the cyclone of light, I will coil myself around my wounded heart

I stand up quickly, my skirt falling in folds around my knees and I pad over to your bench. I try to sit gently as to not disturb your playing

Your eyes dart towards me then back at the air to which you sing

I watch your pale fingers skipping from note to note, almost as white as the old keys

Your hair smells like the dust that falls from the theater's vault above us
I breathe it in.

I know better. The dust will swirl in, the suspended particles will line my lungs, collect in my tissues. It will run in my blood. But I can't stop - I just breathe it all in.
The piano says, "Be sharp. Be careful"

But. I've already breathed you in.