Before dinner you walk home from piano lessons. You’ve been learning arpeggios and can just now barely play both hands together. Most of the lesson is spent doing your homework from the week before. You always forget to practice and your teacher always knows.

You mean to practice. You think about the music from the lessons a lot afterward, but the actual songs get confused in your head. Some of the parts speed up and other parts slow down. You hear the songs the way that you whistle them and then new parts to the song start to come into your head. When you sit down with the music, entire aspects of the melody seem to be missing.

It’s nearly summer. The neighbors are grilling their yard. The street smells like charcoal and chicken. You climb into a creaking swing on your front porch and watch the fireflies as they mingle with the leaves of the elm trees.