Michelle was a cellist in the modern sense. I'd gone to all the shows that her string ensemble had throughout the city. I remember seeing their first show and gazing at how gracefully their arms held time within them. The music they created involved the entire instrument in every way possible. bowing, plucking, tapping, rubbing. You'd think playing like that would make the sound too harsh or out-of-place, but the sound was magnificent. It was as if the instruments were singing out their gratitude to be loved for everything they were. She told me that when she played, she imagined being in a paradise where every ounce of effort was a means to the same, beautiful end. She became one with the grandest orchestra, that played for nothing more than the rapture at beholding itself.

Music spoke to her in ways that poetry could never touch. Whenever she played, I fell silent with envy for the things she experienced that a poet could only wonder about. But then she would always remind me that i had the power to change minds, shift the tides of the human struggle with nothing but a few words, beautifully arranged. It should be fair, but it's not. The only writers who changed anything lived through hell and sometimes they survived. I was no hell-dweller.