Tempo

My niece’s fingers are small, like pale grubs

moving across the ivory, and I want to tell her

to keep the arch of the wrist, to let the weight

fall from the shoulder, but my own thumb hitches.

He sat on a stool with a ruler in his hand,

watching the pendulum of the metronome

swing back and forth in the basement's damp air.

"Ham-fisted," he said, not even looking up.

The word became a physical weight, a lead casing

around my knuckles. Now, the metronome upstairs

is a pyramid of mahogany and grit,

the needle frozen halfway through a beat

it never got the chance to finish.