There are concerts
no audience
ever sees.

The morning
you manage
one page.

The afternoon
you stop
before forcing it.

The evening
you decide
rest
is not surrender.

I used to think
practice
meant repeating
until mastery.

Now
it sometimes means
returning tomorrow.

The illness
did not steal
the music.

It stole
Tuesday.

The ordinary Tuesday
when fingers obeyed,
when sleep arrived,
when a chair
was only a chair
and not a negotiation.

The scales
remained the same.

C major
still waited
with unreasonable optimism.

Bach
did not simplify himself
out of kindness.

The piano
never whispered,

“Take your time.”

Instead,
the body
became the difficult instrument.

Tune this.

Adjust that.

Wait for the pain
to loosen.

Hope the hands
remember
what the mind
still hears perfectly.

The cruelest part
was not forgetting
how to play.

It was remembering.

Hearing,
inside yourself,
the musician
you had been
while negotiating
with the musician
you had become.

Illness
did not teach me
gratitude.

It taught me
limits.

The gratitude
came later,

the first day

a single phrase

returned home.