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| Don't anger her. Just don't. |
Juniper knows all the songs. And her voice is so pretty, passersby on the road below would stop and listen, little smiles on their lips, and reluctantly move on. She had a gentle vibrato, and every time she sang my heart skipped a beat.
I had an old piano, it came with the house, and she knew how to draw out all those songs that were laying dormant for so many years, coaxing them out of the wooden box throught the right tickle on the keys. Happy songs, ragtime, jazz; she could play them all. But when she played the sad songs, the sad songs, well that's when passersby would stop for the longest time, ever so hesitant to carry on with their evening. That's because when you write a sad song there will always be an audience.
I always wanted to kiss her while she played, but after the first time trying that, I attempted it no more. As soon as my lips touched her silky smooth cheek, she turned and stared at me with those eyes, and I felt the blood turn to ice in my veins. She quickly got up, and left so quickly it almost seemed like she didn't open the door to go through it. And it got so cold in the room. So cold. I hope she comes back to play this old piano. It misses her.
She returned once, one night in October when the winds made tiny screams outside the door and in the eaves. She said not a word. Uneasiness set in as she noticed a small spot on my shirt, a stain. It might have been a blot of mustard, or bit of underdone potato. She fixed her gaze, and within a second or two, a hole burned into my shirt, where the stain had been. Looking satisfied, she quickly glided toward the door as if rolling on skates, and left. I haven't seen her since. But I think of her often when my shirt chafes the spot on my chest where hair has ceased to grow.
Joad Scrapsworthy is an unemployed window washer with an impressive baseball card collection.
