Lullabies

I write sometimes even when I've been writing all day, when my fingertips feel like rubber and my mind feels like a molten mess of week-old thoughts and leftover brain waves that linger only to recur in my subconscious. It no longer matters what keys my fingers hit, so long as they don't stop.

I wonder if this is anything close to how Beethoven felt, when he could no longer distinguish between night and day, and there was nothing left for him except the keys of a piano that he dissembled, placing the soundboard on the floor so he could feel the vibrations even when he could no longer hear them.

Vibrations produced by his fingers. Music from his fingers.

This is really not that different. My words are my music from my fingers, too. Strange, peaceful lullabies for myself only. Unspoken tunes that flow from my mind, words that I string together quietly with needle and thread to make melodies.

Nobody said music had to have notes.

But perhaps words and notes are the same, making melodies of prose and stories from song. Maybe I'll let my words cascade, trains of sixteenth-notes to pour over my wet skin. Or perhaps they're whole notes I'll hold in my head til the morning when they'll make sense. Or maybe they're staccato notes, a stepping stone bridge to merge two sides. A portal to merge two worlds. Just as Beethoven merged his tangible and intangible with the vibrations from the floor upon which he crawled, desperate to find the reconciliation that this cruel world provides little of.

My keyboard is my soundboard, too, and this is my song.

A song to build a portal, too.

A song to sing myself to sleep.