Apartment Keys

For several months there was a vacant apartment on the first floor of my building. The door remained open so potential renters could have a look, and one day I peaked inside. It was dark and lacked charm, not at all like my pretty little place just two flights up. No birds, no trees, not an ounce of sun to light the barren floors.

Day after day as I came and went, I passed the vacant apartment and I could swear I heard the silence from behind its sad door. I wondered who would occupy the lonely space, and would it happen before spring.

Then one day, just two weeks ago, I heard sound coming from the apartment. Not the sound of construction and not the sound of silence, but the sound of jazz. And it wasn’t jazz on the radio or jazz in stereo, it was jazz being played on piano by human hands.

And every day since that day, and all through the night, the man who now occupies the once empty apartment plays and plays and plays that piano, and only stops, I imagine, when he is forced to eat or bathe or fall asleep, like a heap on the once barren floor.