After Closing

She sat at the piano in the half light. Thinking she was alone, she let her fingers glide over the keys as though they had a mind of their own, playing the song by reflex instead of thought. She remembered him with every stroke of the keys, expressed the melancholy which she fought to hide during the daylight hours with an aching sense of freedom. It was like a prayer rising to the heavens. What light there was had a starkness that made the observer immediately cold, chilled through by its purity and her tears. This is how the body remembers. The thought struck with such subtlety that it was hard for the watcher to recall it later, once the piano had stopped and he knew it was time for him to go unless he wished to be discovered. As he stepped out into the rainy night, he shook his head. I wrote that tune. 

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