You’re walking away from me.


I was found missing amongst forgotten memories adorned with dust. You only dust me off to stare at my perfect flaws. When I think you’re about to allow me to become a part of your lonely world once again, you leave. There’s other shiny things out there. Other people. You just leave with a groan of disgust.


I remember when your mother first introduced us. You were a beautiful seven-year-old girl with brown curls that framed your heart-shaped face, and green eyes that could take anybody on an adventure to Emerald City. Your name was Arden, for your mother was in love with Shakespeare.



At first, you only stared at me. Then each day, your mother would prompt you to join me in singing tunes or dancing around. She taught you how to make a new friend, even if that friend was just my ordinary self.


You probably didn’t know this, but your mother and I were more alike than you thought.


Eventually, you stopped seeing me as a stranger and we began to play both night and day. We had no worries of the future, no worries of our pasts, just time. You accepted my sharp and flat personality, my out of tune voice, my black and white world. I accepted you and your imagination, your life, your oh so very colorful world. Everything you did was lovely and your optimism colored my skies. I was terribly pleased with our friendship. I couldn’t ask for a better person to be friends with.


We grew up together. You aged, I aged. You changed, I changed. As did the world around you: your parents divorced, your siblings left for college, friends were only temporary, your heart was broken, your mind was twisted. You grew to be a fine mess in such a tiny soul. I was your only comfort, your only permanent friend, your unsung hero.


You never told a soul about our friendship.


“Arden!” your mother called one day when she got home and we were alone together. You shut me up and waltzed into the main room. You were seventeen years old then. You grew to be a beautiful young lady. Your hair was now a darker brown and you were taller than your mother.


She sat you down on the couch in the living room and you stared into the eyes that were so similar to yours. She was a genuine imitation of you. Gracefully, she wrapped her hands around your piano fingers and breathed deeply.


Then she told you. I could hear the silent screams inside you as tears rolled down both of your faces. Your mother still smiled through the tears. She knew better than to expose her vulnerability to you. For hours, you two sat wrapped in each others’ arms, no words spoken. Around midnight, you could hear her snoring lightly. You got up and came back to the room I was in. Quietly, you took a seat next to me and drowned me with your tears, attacked me with your painful sobs. If I had had a heart, I would’ve cried with you, comforted you. All that time, I heard you wishing that you could cut her cancer out. That night, you changed into a different person. We played and sang together one last time, then you shut out the lights and disappeared.


I was left alone.


Years and years passed. When you were twenty-seven, you covered me up and shoved me in the corner.


You didn’t come back until later, but your mother didn’t come back at all.


Now here we are again, right where we began. It’s been twenty-eight years since we first met, but now I am nothing but a part of your childhood, a reminder of your mother, a black and white instrument.


An inanimate object.