Piano by James Mulhern

On that gray day, you chopped the grand piano with an ax.

Surrounded by yellow and red leaves on the hard earth,

you raised your arm to smash it all apart.

I could only wonder. You were a man raised to think

crying was weak. Strength and power should define you.

Men like you could not voice their secrets or despair.

You shattered the instrument, exorcising its shiny veneer.

Resin-impregnated paper, dovetail joints, wooden ribs,

and polished mahogany scattered around you.

Slowly the curved outline of the piano became a ragged mess.

The soundboard heart cracked. Small planks of air-dried wood

joined the miscellany of strings, keys, and padded hammers.

I thought of my mother, the day she moved out,

how you changed the locks and emptied every closet,

destroying each vestige of your shared lives.

If I had left the window to join you outside,

I would have seen your tears,

glistening strings on the soundboard of a broken soul.

James Mulhern’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in literary journals over one hundred times. In 2015, Mr. Mulhern was awarded a writing fellowship to Oxford University. That same year, a story was longlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize. In 2017, he was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His recent novel, Give Them Unquiet Dreams, is a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2019.

Originally published in The Galway Review