In a crowded bar on an empty street I meet a woman who plays the trumpet.

We sit at a high-top table on either side of a breathtaking pile of truffle fries.

She explains that she flirts with jazz but is more committed to classical,

conducting her phrases as she talks with a long truffle fry she’s forgotten she was holding.

I can’t yet see the unsung parts of her

the deeper fugues and rondos she seems to guard closely,

but I can see this:

Her face is a magnificent stage fringed by sweeping gold drapes.

Tiny chandeliers hang from her ears.

Her eyes are two cymbal crashes, that’s how hard they strike me, and then

the ivory keys of her smile, one slightly broken from a push from a brother but still vital.

The sweet pitch of her laughter gets inside me

rattling across my bones,

the lullaby of a light touch blooms in my blood

flows through the chambers to the valves—

tricuspid, pulmonary, I can’t remember the other one.

And when the blushing sunlight sneaks across her cheeks, it’s almost too much—

like she has reached inside my chest, augmenting and amplifying

the thrum of me.

Mitral.

I let myself imagine that she might store me in a soft, cloth bag next to her trumpets,

sliding me out once in a while to gaze at me under the light. Even If only to polish me,

keeping my valves clean, away from the fries.

What a life it would be, knowing my purpose, a multi-valved instrument

built to proclaim the living force of her music.