It’s not until the espresso machine breaks
And it’s sent off for good, a recycled electronic corpse
That you decide to try again all of the things
You never could do.
Too late to pull a shot, the reclaimed counter space
Is too precious to give up, and you have no car
Living in Manhattan, so learning to drive is out too.
Too few machines in your minimalist world.
There’s still the guitar. Two, in fact.
And two of us. My live-in teacher demonstrates
from the floor on the acoustic while I botch power cords
on the electric, sitting in the kitchen chair
we pulled to the “music studio” corner of our one-bedroom.
And I’ve never seen so much excitement despite
How many tries it takes me to place 3 fingers on one chord,
curling my hand to avoid too-long nails snaring
against the wrong strings. I’ve never seen this passion from the inside.
So I try to watch him, don’t let the moment pass me by, and I miss
the fingering of a C chord. He hates repeating himself
except when filled with this passion for music. Took me this long to see it.
So when he shows me from behind
How to curl my hand to reach the 3, the 5 and the 4,
I take in his face on my neck instead of the instructions
Because you have to stop to smell the roses.
Sight-singing I learn from an app on my phone during
the streaming commercials of our nightly comedy show.
He’s not watching either. Laptop out, he’s buying
his first camera.
