Morgan Thomas
There’s a piano.
I hear it drifting through the dim corners of my mind—
a single, trembling note trying to find its place
in a song I used to know.
I close my eyes.
Everything else is fog.
But this…
this I remember.
Small hands.
A soft voice.
A little girl with a loose braid and determined eyes.
Mo.
She sits beside me on the bench,
her feet swinging above the ground,
trying so hard to reach the pedals
even though she never could.
“Grandpa, sing with me,” she says,
her voice bright enough to warm the whole room.
“Don’t forget my part.”
Forget.
Such a small word.
Such a heavy one now.
But back then, I never forgot anything.
Back then, my mind was whole.
Back then, I remembered every note, every breath, every smile.
So I sing.
My voice shakes,
but she beams at me like I just performed on the biggest stage in the world.
She plays the melody—slow, uneven,
her tongue poking out in concentration—
and I follow her lead
like she’s the master and I’m the student.
We sing the chorus together,
her voice soft as a prayer,
mine rough with years I hadn’t lived yet.
She leans her head against my arm
like she belongs there.
My little Mo.
Then—
A sharp breath beside me.
“Grandpa?”
The piano stops.
The bench disappears.
Her small braid fades into the shadows of the room.
I open my eyes.
Mo is here, but grown now—
a young woman kneeling beside my chair,
trying to smile through the breaking in her eyes.
“I heard you,” I whisper,
still caught halfway between the years.
“You were playing our song.”
Her lips part,
a tremble in her throat she can’t hide.
“Grandpa… I wasn’t.”
Her voice cracks around the truth.
“You were remembering.”
I look toward the piano in the corner.
Its lid is closed.
Dust along the keys.
No small girl sitting there.
Just silence
that feels too loud.
My chest tightens.
The memory slips—
her feet swinging, her braid bouncing, her voice calling me back—
and I reach for it,
but it drifts away like smoke.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper,
though I don’t know who I’m apologizing to.
Her?
The boy I once was?
The man I can’t be anymore?
Mo takes my hands in hers.
She presses her forehead to them—
and I feel her tears before I hear them.
“You don’t have to remember everything,” she whispers.
“Just remember I’m here.”
I want to tell her I do.
I want to tell her I always will.
But the truth hangs heavy on both of us.
Some days I forget her name.
Some days I forget my own.
Some days the world is a broken puzzle
with missing pieces I can’t recover.
But today—
for this small heartbeat of time—
I remember her.
I remember our song.
I remember the way she sang like she trusted me
to always be the one beside her.
She moves to the piano.
Her hands shake.
She sits, just like she did when she was nine.
And when she plays that first fragile note—
a note I can barely recognize but still somehow feel—
I close my eyes.
Because I know the memory won’t stay.
But the music…
the music lingers.
It holds me like her small hand once did.
And for one soft, vanishing moment
I am in the past,
she is a child,
and the song
is still ours.
Before it slips away again.