I walk onto the stage. The lights are blinding. The panel of judges is a dark, faceless wall. I cannot see my mother in the audience, but I feel her. She is the pressure drop before a storm.
And then, for the first time in my life, I do not play the notes she taught me. I do not play Paganini or Bach or Tchaikovsky. ichika matsumoto pov
The Gravity of Silence
But for the first time in seventeen years, the silence after the music does not scare me. I walk onto the stage
I play the sound of the train tracks at 5:47 AM. The hollow rhythm of waiting. I play the sound of my mother’s silence after a perfect run. I play the whisper of my classmates, the soft rustle of Tanaka’s paperback pages, the imagined warmth of a hand I have never held. I cannot see my mother in the audience, but I feel her