The Violin

Rain rippled down the windows.  He remembered that to his fingertips, long before they wrinkled and shriveled, it had felt like velvet rubbed the wrong way, the smudgy softness pooling in the corners against the leather.  The leather was soft, worn with the warmth of hands.  The silver clasps, real silver, were polished and opened softly at his touch.  He liked to think that after all these years they still glowed, that they warmed to him and opened with the soft, surprised gap of a lover who had drifted off on a sun-soaked afternoon nap, astonished and awakened by a single touch.  The leather still creaked as the case opened, unaffected by the harshness of heat or cold.  It, and he, had stayed safe from the sun beyond the front door for some time now.  He loved the way the wood still gleamed, peeking out coyly, an unexpected amber eye glancing between kohl-rimmed lids.  He knew a girl with eyes that color once, eyes the color of whiskey.  Each time she gazed at him, he was disoriented.  Each time he looked away, even for a moment, he’d remember them as blue.  Or sometimes green.  But then he would turn back to her and they would always be a sweet honey, and each time she had looked at him, his breath would catch.

            His fingers knew the shape of the neck more intimately than that of any lover.  Though callused, he could still feel every scratch though the pads of his fingertips.  The tiny irregularities of the grain, smoothed over with varnish and sandpaper, raised again by time and fingers and melodies.  He had played for her, the girl with the whiskey eyes, and she had laughed and twinkled and made sounds even more beautiful than his bow ever could.  And that day he had chipped the shoulder, a tiny nick, as he rushed to free his hands for tasks more urgent than opening a case.

            He had played for her outside, the dappled light through the trees mimicking her freckles.  And he had played for her outside not two years later, when her freckles were mocked by the speckling of the granite.  And as he played for her, the sun obscenely, adamantly persisting its audience, he knew that he would never play again for another.

            His bow touched string and he played, once more, for her.