They say time is the best killer. I would argue it's experience.

If I were to shove myself into a hole in the ground and spend the rest of my life there, the only thing killed would be my will to live.

But in the outside world, experience is what kills who you once were. I know this all too well. I've probably died a hundred times.

I died when I left my rural home and joined an orchestra in France, trading innocence for artistry. I died again when I got married, and what a beautiful death it was. And most recently, I died with Viviana – the only true death I will ever feel.

In fact, I believe that if I were to die right now, the book of souls wouldn't add a name, for mine is already written there.

Sometimes I wish I had lived in that hole all my life, shielded from the world's influences. Because experience has killed me. And now, it has killed my music.

When the world was dark and unknown, I always had the piano as my ground and a composition as my map. But now the ground trembles beneath my fingers and my map leads me straight off a cliff.

It’s been a year since I last wrote a composition. It’s been a month since I got to this house.

I thought returning to my childhood home would help me remeber how to create. But all I’ve gotten so far are ten pounds from my mothers cooking and a growing back pain from the hard beds. Oh. And loads of allergies.

The attic where I kept my piano and papers is veiled in dust and the soft glow of a half moon. Part of me wants to call this romantic. The other thinks how _dreadful_.

Cobwebs line the passage to the piano, connecting between old drawers and furniture.

I sit on the piano stool and pick up a booklet that rests on the pianos yellowed keys.

The book cracks open and releases a puff of dust, it’s pages worn and ink faded. I carefully turn the pages.

I wouldn’t call anything I wrote during these times _great. _In fact, It would be greatly offending to anyone with two ears to call the things in this book anything more than good. These songs belong to a boy who only knew how to write what he felt, and not what he knew. As simple as the music was, it is I now who is the fool that cannot bring himself to write.

When I flip to the second to last page, half a dozen roses fall out, delicately landing on the ivory keys. They’re dried and brown, heavy with dust and age.

I pick one up and it tears, as if it was meant to only be touched by the past. I grab another and run my thumb up an down it’s crisp edge.

I cannot remeber who gave me the petals, or why I felt the need to keep them. Whoever gave them is someone long lost to the past. Perhaps it is the thrill of that mystery that draws me to the pages the roses fell out of.

The composition is a simple piano nocturn. There’s nothing inspiring about it. I likely wrote a thousand songs like this before. Another composer has created a greater version of this somewhere out there. Still, I straighten out the book and begin playing.

I press the delicate arpeggios on the out of tune piano, the melody rising and falling like an unsteady breath. The song is written like a caress, coaxing the sound out of the piano in a tender lament.

As I play the song, my hand brushes against a petal, it’s rough exterior grazing my hand.

I slow down the tempo and shift to minor keys, adding suspensions to create a slow, nostalgic melody. The song is romantic. It fawns over something lost.

As the song progresses, for the first time in a year, I seem to understand what I have to do. The piano still trembles under my fingers, and I’m still running towards the cliff. But it sounds _beutiful_.

The song ends, and like a falling petal it descends into silence.

This song was perhaps meant to be a love song many years ago. But now it a ghost of the past. A ghost that belongs to the me that’s no longer here.

Like a petal, I’ve died and changed, withred a little, and then stayed in the same dark attic for a long, long, time.

But now with a new song, a thousand more seem to be possible.

As I walk away from the attic, I realize I can’t let petals on a piano stop me from playing anymore.

_My first person tense needs a lot of refining._

ヽ(￣д￣;)ノ