Your fretboard is sticky with unfinished childhood,
where juice boxes leak into solos
and the ghost of a pog slaps your wrist mid-riff.
You press the fifth fret—
but it plays a bike bell.
Chord shapes collapse into fingerpaint.
E becomes an elephant, curled in lowercase,
trumpeting in the key of recess.
You try to shred.
You get a ribbon instead.
Participation in a memory
you never quite had.
There is a note—
somewhere between C-sharp and shame—
that your pinky can’t find.
You almost impress someone.
You drop the pick into your drink.
Still, you play.
Anna listens with her elbows.
Her eyes blink in 5/4.
She folds inward
like a carousel closing for the season.
She does not cry.
She crosses her ankles into a question mark
and uncrosses them into goodbye.
“You should play that in a hallway,” she says,
“Somewhere narrow.
Somewhere echo matters.”
And your heart veers—
not forward, not back—
but diagonally.
Toward the fretbeard’s twitch.
Toward the ache in the wood.
Toward the note
that can’t be named
but plays anyway
when no one listens.