“They think it’s benign,” Mrs. Shelton tells me.
We sit at her piano; it’s time for my lesson.
“I’ll need surgery. You’ll feed my cats?”
I’m learning Bach’s Little Prelude in D minor,
an atonal piece that turns chaos into order.
“I’m eighty-five,” Mrs. Shelton says,
“same age as Bach when he died.”
I look at my teacher’s fluffy white hair
and picture Bach in a powdered peruke.
“I’ll leave you the Steinway in my will
if you promise to play Bach once a week.”
It’s a small price to pay. I agree.
“But you might still live a long time,” I suggest.
“And you might get to Carnegie Hall,”
Mrs. Shelton says. She points to the Prelude.
“Play,” she orders me. “Music never dies.”
Esta Fischer's poetry has appeared in Steam Ticket, PANK, The Blotter, Bacopa, and New York Quarterly. She received a Master's degree in Creative Writing from Boston University.