The tip of the tongue,
the lips and the teeth.
The tip of the tongue, the lips and the teeth.
The tip of the tongue, the lips and the teeth.
The tip of the tongue, the lips and the teeeeeeeeeth.
The tip of the tongue, the lips and the teeth.
The tip of the tongue, the lips and the teeth.
The tip of the tongue, the lips and the teeeeeeeeeth.
She held out the last note as long as her breath would
allow, lips pulled taut across her teeth in an exaggerated grimace. You couldn’t
tell she was happy by the looks of it. But she was.
Singing scales was her favourite. She could feel her
diaphragm expand and descend, expand and descend. She could sing out the week’s
stress on rainy Friday nights, water pelting on galvanize like bullets. She could
sing like no one was watching, because no one was, voice lost in the fray of
many, climbing high, falling low, sweet release.
She could feel the exact moment the world shifted and her
chords were warm enough to do anything she bid them to, but then only when no
one was watching. For when they watched, she seized, forgot notes like words
during a speech.
She shouldn’t even be there tonight. The beginnings of a
sore throat were buried red at its base. She would be hoarse by night’s end,
she knew, perhaps barely able to swallow, but she needed her release, sweet
release.
“I shouldn’t even be here tonight,” she said to the Girl on
her right. The Girl was picking foam out of the chair’s torn seat.
The Girl hummed and smiled, turned to her right and
murmured. Just then there was no sound between songs. “She shouldn’t even be
here,” is what the Girl said.
A slip of the lip, she said to herself. She opened her
mouth to explain it away, but her voice was already gone.
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