Author's Notes: I have always wanted to write from the perspective of an inanimate object.
Afflicted
The piano does not speak of the secrets it knows. Even as it trips down the lower end of the scales and the felted hammers send their notes quavering into the air, it does not speak of those things, biting and taut as the wires buried deep inside. Dangerous as the possibility of a flared match against its bleached-wood underbelly. With seeming indifference, it ignores the tremble in the long fingers that dance caressingly across its ivory, ignores the slick of amber liquid carelessly spilled, the clumsy knock of a cane against hard maple leg. The piano will never tell.