In Tune
Three strings per note,
each tuned to a frequency
that is technically wrong.
She leaves the faintest
disagreement between them
on purpose.
Perfect unison
sounds dead — a tone
so clean it has no body.
The shimmer comes from
what doesn't match.
The life is in the error.
Twelve fifths should close
the circle. They overshoot
by a comma nobody can fix,
so she distributes it —
each note equally,
acceptably, wrong —
and the whole instrument
speaks in a voice
that is no single string's.
When she finishes,
the woman asks her to play.
She plays the simplest thing she knows.
The room fills with a sound
that has been absent.
The woman cries
not because the music is sad
but because the piano
is alive again
and alive means
not perfect, not pure,
not any one thing —
just three strings
slightly disagreeing
in the dark.