When I was seventeen I began piano lessons. The sounds lightened the heavy tapestries that we hadn’t the heart to remove. I learned to play Greensleeves and Stairway to Heaven. Sometimes the teacher would reach around my shoulders, his very existence ran through his fingers into my hands. Once we played Misty and my heart beat so hard against the walls of my chest that I lost my balance for the first time. Later he swooped into my dreams and like wild birds we took to the sky, the teacher and I.