Written by Miriam Fernandez
Art by Bryan Geraldo
Every time she played a chord of a song on the piano that had lived for years and years, the same piano that her parents had played together when they were younger, she would close her eyes and remember.
She would remember the first time she saw the ocean. The place her family visited every year after, building sand castles and running happily. She would bring books sometimes, sitting in a chair as the sunset appeared. Picture after picture, videos and videos of times that appeared again in every note that she played on the piano.
She would remember building a treehouse with her sister. It was a place filled with puzzles, pencils, pens, lots of journals, and plants–mostly roses, as her sister liked them the most. She and her sister would run to the treehouse after school ended, each trying to get there first. She knew she was faster, but she also knew that if she got there first, she wouldn’t be able to feel the warmth of the sunlight. She wouldn’t be able to close her eyes, wouldn’t feel the flowers and the leaves of the trees as they ran. So she would let her sister get there first and soon, she would be there too.
She would remember when her family left their home. She had grown up there, a house surrounded by many trees and other houses where she met her friends. On afternoons when she didn’t have homework, or at least didn’t want to do her homework, she would rest on a tree–her tree–and read. She would bring a pillow with her every time and sometimes she fell asleep. Peaceful. That’s how she felt there. And even though they left, she knew that it was her home, her tree.
And she would remember the first time she played a song on the piano and the instruments she learned to play. And the movies she would watch with her family and when her family surprised her on her birthday. And then the notes would finish, the song would end, and she would open her eyes again, happy to have remembered everything.
outlander zine 