What the Body Remembers

I sat down at the piano

for the first time in ten years.

My fingers went somewhere

I didn't tell them to go.

Chosen by some part of me

that lives below thinking,

that doesn't need permission

to remember.

Chopin nocturne.

Something I played in college,

something I haven't thought about

in a decade,

something my hands

apparently never forgot.

The muscle in my forearm

tensed and released

in a pattern

I'd completely forgotten I knew,

like my body

had been practicing

in the dark,

like there's a version of me

that never stopped

playing,

that just went quiet,

that was waiting

for my hands

to remember

what my brain

let go of.

I played halfway through

before I had to stop.

Halfway through

because it was terrifying,

because my body

knew something

I didn't,

because there's a muscle memory

that goes deeper

than thinking,

that lives

in the fiber

and doesn't ask

permission to arrive.

The piano went silent.

My hands went still.

But something in them

was still moving,

still remembering,

still holding the shape

of the keys,

the exact weight of the pressure,

the precise geometry

of a piece

I stopped learning

years ago.

I don't know who I was

when I memorized this.

I don't know why

my body kept it,

why it refused

to let it go,

why it waited

for this exact moment

to remind me

that I was once

someone

who could do

this thing,

someone

who lived

inside this skill,

someone

who was held

by my hands.

I closed the piano.

I sat in the silence.

I didn't try

to play again.

But my forearm

remembered anyway,

tensing

in the ghost

of the notes,

holding the memory

of who I used to be,

refusing

to let me forget

what I'm capable of

even when

I'm not

trying.