The hall on Vernor had a piano that knew how to hold a room together the way a knot holds a net, not because it was perfect, but because it limped exactly right. Cracked soundboard, one key with a chipped tooth that made a salt note. The aunties swore if you ran the figure slow and pressed the left pedal just so, the block went soft at the edges, arguments tucked themselves into inside voices, babies unclenched, even the streetlight by the churro cart took a breath. I didn’t believe it until the night the sirens stacked on the Lodge and the air went sharp and we needed that hush and the pedal fell off in my hands like a tooth with its own story, bronze bracket gone, only two screw ghosts left grinning up at me.
I thought glue (ha), I thought gum (absolutely not), I thought “stomping works,” which it does not, and the compass in my pocket woke up angry, needle not north at all, south, jittering like a fish escaping Sunday dinner. Sometimes my job is to be dragged by better instincts…
