I WILL BE REINCARNATED as someone who has long fingers, not abnormally long, just longer than average. I will be a concert pianist who has no interest in the piano and cannot snap her fingers without saying, "Oh yeah."

You'll be the guy who doesn't talk at parties and whispers when he should shout.

"What?" I'll ask, when you finally get the nerve to sidle up next to me.

"Nothing," you'll whisper back and we'll never really know each other, but you'll remember the one time you tried to talk to me and I'll remember that guy who whispered into my shoulder the night before I got my wisdom teeth taken out.

Our lives will go in separate, but not so different directions. I'll avoid the upright piano, because I don't want to appear stuffy and so will you, because you aren't any good at it. You won't know you're avoiding the piano, but you will be, because our lives will be attached by a string. I'll be forever yanking the string, trying to figure out what it's for and you'll wonder why at all the most important moments in your life, you're flat on your face.

Then when we're older, but not quite grey, I'll see you in a bookstore. I'll be going in to buy a keyboard and you'll be returning one that your Aunt Fran bought you, thinking that since you were such a nice boy, you ought to take up nice-boy habits. We'll stand at the same counter and when you strum your fingers across the glass case, I'll elbow you, because I think it's annoying. You'll look at me and I'll look at you and we'll both pretend to not remember who the other is. But we'll both know and when I leave the store, keyboard in tow, you'll follow me, because I will have unintentionally tangled our connecting string around your ankles.

"What are you doing?" I'll ask, with you right on my heels. As I turn around to face you, I'll step on the string, it'll break and you'll fall flat on your face.

I'll walk home, unwrap the keyboard and learn all the notes and chords, stumbling over flats and sharps, but by the end of the night I'll have it.

You'll be inexplicably drawn to pianos for the rest of your life and never know why.


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