I played so pretty for you... the day we met. Hit all the right keys, played the perfect notes and silently sang my throat raw, and my heart empty. Played so pretty... just for you. Never again.

[You were so pretty on the day we met. So enamored, and intent on touching all my buttons; pushing them at precisely the wrong moment. It was a symphony of error... a thing of exquisite beauty. My will barely strong enough to keep from spinning you around, pressing your smooth body to mine, and sliding my hands across your strings, to show you the music in your heart. Music you apparantly could not hear.]

Playing me so imperfectly once I gave you the chance, with sour notes still music to your ears and heartache to mine. I allowed you to continue, hoping you would feel it; the way my body weeps with your hands on my controls. Feel the way you send a shiver down my neck every time your chin rests there, and your hands caress here. Whispers of breath always in my ear... my hair matted under the weight of your heavy heart.

[Perfume trickled from your ear every time. You smelled so empty inside, but far from hollow. Whispers never echoed back to me, yet the reverberation of our music was always so conceivable. Whenever I touched you, your chords felt wet... dripping wet even if the timing had been right.]

Funny how you thought we were so in-tune, or had a kind of perfect harmony. Especially when I read from music and you played it by ear. I was always the fine art counterpart to your thrown together, sketchy mishmash. Opposites may attract, but what really creates harmony?

[The way you looked when we played as one was a thing so inhuman it could only be called "perfect." The unholy sound of your cries complimenting my tenor... I still get a pleasant shiver from the memory of that shriek. We were the perfect duet.]

Our eventual demise, or disbanding if you will, was entirely your fault. You rubbed me wrong, struck the wrong chords, and just bled me dry by making me wail instead of sing. Turning me into a banshee... a new Medusa even. I cried for you every time you played me, always afraid to turn and look you in the eye. Not for fear of turning you into stone (your heart was already stone-cold), but afraid of falling for you... into you. Like in one of those tragic and beautiful operas we always talked about attending. Terrified of falling into a dangerously simple rhythm, and dancing like this forever. My blood was already beginning to run cold, numbing my fingers and forcing me to rely on your hands to emote my heart.

[Our spilt was my fault. I know you can't say that to anybody but yourself, but I could feel how strongly you believed it in the tenseness of you every time I played your heart, trying to help you release something I could not quite understand. Or rather, each time I fumbled those strings, hit a sour note and felt your eyes close while my chin rested on your shoulder. Waning faith never screamed so loud as when you covered your windows. Such a chillingly high note heard only in our heads, but powerful enough to start the first of many hairline cracks in the physical foundation of "us." The first step in the process of tearing "us" apart piece by piece, without any help from one another to accomplish the task. We have been alone longer than either of us will admit. Even back when we were a pair of crumpled, tangled notes with no solution in sight for how to become one, or break it off altogether.]

How we got here is a thing of uncertainty. We were made to fall apart, designed to drift away from one another. Yet, somehow, we are still locked together... my smooth body always pressing into you with a degree of passion these days. Though your clumsy hands still play imperfectly by my standards, somehow that doesn't seem as important anymore. Harmony, so I have come to believe, is not about a standard; harmony is "us." We are the very definition of the word... "discordia concors" incarnate.

[Why we are still togehter baffles me beyond comprehension. I tore my hair out trying to figure you out. Such a perfect machine were you, so perfect that my only excuse was that you had to be flawed. Had to be, because I knew I wasn't. We never should have started this process in the first place. When we first met, I should have shook your hand, and looked away from what I saw inside of you; that hollow crying out so mutedly. Now we are stuck in this battle where there is no end. Overlapping periods where we have both given up are the most peaceful, but one of us ultimately starts again. Vicious, fretful, passion filled playing that strikes many an obtuse chord of discontent. Whenever you are pleased, I cannot touch you; or rather reach you... not at the level you are capable of maintaining. And when I am on my game, you are displeased and shut yourself off, closing your eyes to what is happening.]

We are such eternal masturbators. Even with each other in reach, we have never really been able to get out of our own headspace long enough to see what it is like to give ourselves over to one another. Which is why it has come to this... my surrender. Regardless of all else now, of all "us" even, I give up. For better or worse, and til death do us part. There is no point in trying to bring you around anymore. Touch me there, like you used to when you thought you were such a god. Caress my strings forever, and hear me wail in your head. I know you like it. Try to whisper in my ear again, and notice how my hair reaches out to you... catching your words; your breath. Killing them before they ever have a chance to echo back to you.

[...]

I promise not to close my eyes again, I don't want to see what is inside anymore. Play me, my dear... show me what we are and where we have been. I'll show you things you never knew existed inside of you... you'll play so pretty for me this time around.

--
Stock Photos used: sunchica-STOCK, weirdpassion-stock, sorrow-stock

This piece is also part of Raster's Beautiful Decay Chapter (#38)