❦
Breathe.
You tell yourself to breathe steadily as your mind fills with dark ominous clouds.
A thought echoes and seems to bounce around endlessly inside your mind.
"What if something goes wrong?"
You listen to the repeated sound of your feet hitting the ground, drowning out everything around you.
It feels suffocating, the dark clouds of your mind enveloping you as your legs pull you towards the place you do not want to go.
Once your feet meet the edge of the door, your hand reaches for the cold metal handle.
An uncomfortable chill runs down your spine.
It hurts less to walk on the soft carpet than the solid concrete sidewalk outside the church.
You hear less of a "clip clap" coming from your feet and your focus turns to the people gathered inside the poorly lit room.
Looking around, you notice a couple unfamiliar smiles being thrown at you.
The dreaded time arrives when everyone pours into the church sanctuary, awaiting the performance they had come to see.
A few familiar shapes fill your vision.
You see the round curves of the pews where the crowd is seated.
The shiny black grand piano greets you at the end of the aisle, and the smiling face of your teacher is ready to introduce you.
Sitting on a soft leather bench, black and white fills your vision.
Piano keys, music notes, thin paper...
Silence.
An eerie, unspoken nervousness fills the air.
Trembling, sweaty fingers stroke the sleek keys of the piano as you practice your warm-ups.
Ba-bum, ba-bum...
It seems as if your heart beat gets increasingly louder as the sound of the piano gets quieter.
But your mind is only playing tricks and your thoughts slowly begin to organize themselves before the big performance.
Your fingers move again with a gentle force, and the sweet sound of your first love fills your ears.
The piano.
As you begin to massage the black and white shapes in front of you, everything else is forgotten.
You are captured in the moment, the beautiful music filling you with bliss, memories flowing like water.
But times like these are only temporary.
Like a small bird fleeting from a hawk, the performance quickly comes to an end.
Rain.
The clapping of hands in the crowd sounds like the rain that has finally begun to pour.
You feel a satisfying release as the dark clouds in your mind relieve themselves.
Smiles and cheers are heard as the clouds begin to blow away.
You feel the warmth of the sun through the windows as you bow for the crowd.
The clouds that have now cleared, are replaced with a rainbow in your heart.
❦
