Action

6 days ago
2 min read

by Michael Czyzniejewski

Everything that had been missing—my car keys, my work keys, my Royals cap, my brother’s Zippo, my pocket knife with the pearled handle, Mitzi’s old collar, Mitzi’s second collar, the tongs with the crooked grip, three sets of nail clippers, the apple peeler, the pumpkin scraper, the cufflinks my dad gave me, the two tie tacks I bought at Sears, my bowling ball, my catcher’s mitt, the puck I caught at the Wolves’ game, the magnet from Devil’s Tower, the champagne cork from our engagement party, Lydia’s Mom’s tennis bracelet, Lydia’s purple mood ring, her toe ring that left the green mark, the right Birkenstock that fell from the kayak, the paddle with the worn grip, her floppy Onuntoga Lake hat she found at Lake Champlain, the flint and steel we never struck, her NuvaRing that worked too well, the message I wrote on the carryout menu telling her the doctor had called, the cards from her coworkers, the deflated Get Well! balloon with its yellow ribbon, the bag of hair she made me cut, the razor she used to shave her head, four half bottles of Percocet, the vase from the arrangement from the wake, and a framed picture of her, in her hospital bed, on what must have been her last day, a picture I had never seen, that no one was there to take, that no one would want to take, let alone frame—all of it tucked inside the belly of an abandoned piano, the tall, wooden type, like from a saloon, but out in the deep woods, my first hike since she’d gone, a year later to the day, a piano that looked like it had been there for decades, rain-damaged and vine-covered, though I knew this path, had been down it dozens of times with Lydia, and we’d never seen it before. I felt compelled to sit, peck at the keys, so many of them missing, yet just enough, the exact keys that I needed still there: Despite me never playing before, not a note, I played a song, my fingers gliding, the music flowing. I knew right when the song was over, then to look inside the piano: Everything that was missing lay on top of the action, all of it waiting for me to take it home, or maybe leave in the woods, knowing I could go back whenever I needed.

Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of four collections of stories, most recently The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Moon City Press and Moon City Review, as well as Interviews Editor of SmokeLong Quarterly. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts and two Pushcart Prizes.