A Cough...

Patrick Pawlowski

Illustration by Helaina Govia

A cough. A shooshing. The pianist's careful attention to how he touches the time-piece.

A cough. A repressed tickle at my own throat. The poor man keeps coughing. He desperately doesn't want the attention. The pianist pays the same attention to time - he is still conducting. He opens his mouth with the dry of anticipation as the clock runs down. The time-piece is raised higher - held aloft, it feels long. I pick at a callous on my finger amid the pensive waiting.

The ritual of opening and closing the key cover roughs like a kind of music. I wonder about the time. He moves as if it's time to call time, but he doesn't.

He breathes necessarily between movements. He takes his glasses off and we know it's the end.

Patrick Pawlowski is a graduate student, teacher, writer, brother and son, a Pole, and other stuff.