unnamed raze he named his cat stupid. i don't know who does a thing like that. a piano teacher who calls you his friend and then jumps ship as soon as your dad stops paying him to teach you things your brain refuses to learn, i guess. that's what he was, anyway. the best lesson i ever had was probably the one i played the worst at. he was teaching out of his house by then. not because he couldn't afford office space. he just didn't want to pay for it anymore. i sat in the living room and waited for him to finish up with the student before me. she had curly red hair. she was a year or two younger than i was. that's all i ever knew about her. he asked if i wanted some green tea. i said sure. he made me a mug. it didn't look green to me. it didn't taste like anything at all. i played with his cat, and he ran through a song with the girl upstairs. i'm not sure if it was meant for four hands, but they played it that way. their fingers traced out the same melody an octave apart. there was something innocent in those notes. i was wearing a black corduroy shirt i don't have anymore. i smelled like something pure. when it was my turn to sit on the piano bench and embarrass myself, i asked him the name of the song i'd been listening to on a loop for an hour while i shadowboxed with stupid. he wouldn't tell me. he didn't think it was anything worth knowing. twenty-three years later, i still remember every bit of it. i could play it for you right now. i bet he doesn't even remember my face. 220927 ... nr sometimes you don't know what to call a feeling. it might be sadness or it might be worry or it might be annoyance or it might be anxiety or it my be fear or it might be a mix of all those but not much of them. maybe when you feel you shouldn't be feeling a feeling, you have more trouble naming it. 221021 ... i feel like typos suuuuuuuuuuuck 221021 ... nr feeling of longing 221021 what's it to you? who go blather from