Rebecca Macijeski

My mother and I sit on the back porch, bare feet in summer grass as we take the upright down to pieces, breeze humming through its strings. I extract each melodic tooth and sort them in octaves for rinsing, tidy enclosure in boxes, remembering in each how my young fingers rioted over them searching for sound and the way it grows like its own unruly animal. The old piano lies open to Sunday morning sun, swallowing blossoms that drift over like stars from the apple tree I climbed as a girl. My mother and I sit here in a quiet usually reserved for churches, hands moving slowly over what we gather —piles of soft hammers, odd coils of wire. We take up wet rags and wash each wooden key down its surface, wet music pooling onto our skin.