tangled

I had my fingers on the piano keys, just resting while my mind tried to pull together some sort of action for them to execute. Everything was silent, except for the sound of two pairs of lungs working strenuously and unceasingly to keep their owners filled with oxygen. I kept my eyes down, but I could sense Jonny's movement as he walked closer to the piano.

I pressed a few of my fingers down, and the resulting sound was similar to someone vomiting. I thought so, anyway. So, I moved my fingers over to some other keys, and hit those ones. It wasn't much better.

Jonny strummed a chord. I looked up from the keys. He strummed it again, then looked at me. I tried to mimic the sound with the piano. It took a few times, and he replayed it to help. Once I got it, music just started to flow. It came from somewhere inside me- my soul, maybe, or my heart- and spread out to my fingertips, infecting the piano as well.

It sounded lovely. I looked at Jonny and played it again. Then I played it a third time. He accompanied me, picking some strings every now and then. I watched him working out some sort of deal with the guitar, and I hardly noticed that my fingers had begun to play the little tune once more.

Jonny struck the guitar more confidently this time, and much more often. His riffs nearly drowned out my ballad in some parts, but that wasn't a problem. Our tired minds and musically bewitched hands were joining forces to construct a most magnificent harmony. We were each in our own little world.

Then we stopped playing. Jonny and I stared at each other. Before I knew it, more music was playing. But it sounded so distant, and so close at the same time. I knew it was coming from me, but I couldn't believe that it was. I had no control over my hands, and I kinda liked it that way.

My eyes moved with Jonny's body as he walked around the piano and sat next to me on the bench. He bent his head down briefly to fix his fingers on some of the frets. My fingers kept moving without my permission and without wanting to stop. Jonny attached his gaze to mine. The piano started to sound more heavily and my hands increased their rapidity. Jonny's fingers took control over his guitar, too.

The room vibrated with the coexistence of guitar and piano, two instruments colliding their spirits together. Really, it was Jonny and I who were the instruments. We were being played by so many things, least of all the piano and guitar. My hands were moving, but I wasn't moving them. This raw emotion inside of me, it was moving them. And the emotion just kept spilling into every tiny particle of space in my body that it could, pumping my heart more quickly with every second that passed. My hands moved with my heart, and the music played louder and faster.

Jonny was clenching his jaw. The emotion was taking him over, too. His fingers gracefully slid over the neck of the guitar, producing the most amazing melody I've ever heard. I was drowning, basking in its stunning waters, and I didn't want to be saved. I let it wash over me, cleansing me of everything that felt wrong.

All that was left felt right. So, I let myself be taken away into this world where existed only Jonny and I, and the music. It was distant in our ears, but so close in our hearts. In fact, it was our hearts- beating and chiming and expressing everything without fear. And as the guitar and piano had collided, so Jonny and I became one. One unstoppable, unbreakable bond that strengthened with every minute, every heavy breath inhaled and exhaled and repeated until it was even heavier, even deeper than ever before.

And then my hands pounded the keys and stopped. Instantaneously, Jonny's hands stopped. We stared for only a second longer, then I turned away.

As the last echo of our music rang its farewell, I looked around the room and tried to slow my heartbeat.