i forgot all about a song until i heard it on this album.

it is hard to hear a song that i used to play, but harder with everything else that comes along behind the music. i wanted to be her, at the piano with a long red dress, thick black at my eyes and hair like a musician. barefoot, always barefoot. during that song you have no choice but to let the rhythm carry you into the keys until the floor beneath you drops into the same shiny black as the top of the piano.

i was never that pretty, though, and God knows i never wore makeup like that which you claimed to hate and probably still do.

and when you made me sit at your keyboard while you handed me a page from a tattered book of folk sheet music and told me, "i want you to play this," i couldn't, because i was only wearing a plain sweater and i never actually got around to drying my hair.

my fingers can't translate into sound waves the way your ears translate into notes.

so there i was, somewhere in between a diva with a red strap falling off the shoulder and a straight-haired songwriter in a flannel shirt - so far from both of them - and handing it back to you, staunchly avoiding the gaze of an amazing musician who was humbled by a stupid girl like me because he couldn't read music.