Xylophone Bones

written at Et. Al. Gallery & Bookshop

Approximately fifteen of us wrote silently amongst enormous abstract paintings and shitty fold-up chairs. We’d gathered for an experimental fiction workshop led by Angie Sijun Lou.

Prompt: Write about displacement. In the first sentence, begin with context & subvert it.

Writing time: 30 min

After the crows cleared away from my body, I learned how to play the xylophone. 

Every rib on my cage rang out with a different pitch. My white-bleach-bone fingers made good mallets. But the notes weren't arranged in order, and I had to memorize the new keys, overriding the years of muscle memory from the piano bench. 

My instructor used to force me to hold raw eggs in my palms as I played, to make sure I had perfect form. The right arc of fingers over ebony and ivory. And if I tightened my fists or let my grip slack, the vicious albumen would seep between the cracks of my fingers or drip onto my fine black pants. It had been the uniform I wore to class, the same kind of dress-shirt-blazer bullshit that had clothed me for my funeral. I felt a dull glee when the last threads had been pecked away.

I played Hot Cross Buns, Mary Had a Lamb, Twinkle Twinkle. I mastered Greensleeves, then Fur Elise. I could not remember how much time had passed. The wood of my coffin rotted. The grass died then grew again. Wildflowers began to peek through my eye sockets.

“There’s a party ‘bout to go down,” someone said. I turned my head, disturbing the dandelions.

“What?”

“Down South. In the ash grove.”

There was nothing living near me. Nothing I could see except–

The fungi that scalloped the remains of my coffin was brown and white, the shades of coffee and cream before stirring.

“What kind of party?”

“The Wild kind of party. The bacchanal, dancing, howlin’ type of party. I know because my brothers and sisters tell me. I know because my roots run for miles. Soon, when the moon is full.”

“But I can’t go,” I protested.

“Why not?”

“I can’t walk.”

“Sure you can.”

“What if I fall?”

“Sure you will.”

The moon wanes and wanes above me, then becomes new, then grows fuller and fuller.

I think back to the piano in the parlor, now unused, now rust and splinters. How I dragged myself there. The evening’s entertainment.

I’ve never been to a Wild party.

How nice would it be, to go there and play a xylophone of bones. 

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Artwork: Untitled work by Alex Niño

Favorite class reading: “The Cafeteria in the Evening and Pool in the Rain” by Yoko Ogawa