Keep the Rhythm

Lyrics

[Intro]
The room is all silver mirrors, but they don’t reflect.
They absorb the light from a single window that shows a library instead of a sky.
The air smells of old paper and ozone.

[Verse 1]
My dead grandmother is here.
She moves without a sound across the tiled floor, which is a chessboard.
She’s watering the plants.
The pots are polished chrome, and they grow sheet music instead of leaves.
She pours liquid mercury from a silver can, and where it touches the paper, new notes bloom in black ink.
Quavers and crotchets writhing for a moment before settling into a chord I almost recognize.
She never looks at me, but I know she knows.
Her dress is woven from staff lines, a melody I can't place.

[Chorus]
And then she turns.
Her face is a gentle blur, but her hands are perfectly clear.
She offers me a single leaf, folded into a note.
Inside, in her cursive, it just says…
Keep the rhythm.

[Verse 2]
This is the part where I know.
The impossible physics of the garden.
My grandmother, ten years gone, tending to a song.
I do the check. I try to read the music on the nearest leaf.
The time signature is 13/8. I blink and it’s a map of this very room, with a small silver icon of me standing here.
The music is reading me back. The test fails, but I am here.
More here than before.

[Bridge]
So I walk toward her, through the silver air.
And I hug her.
I expect her to turn to dust, to static, to the end of the signal.
But she is solid. Warm. She smells like rain on dry earth.
She doesn't disappear.
The hug holds. The dream holds.
Behind my closed eyes, the library in the window expands, shelf after impossible shelf, all filled with these silent, growing scores.

[Chorus]
She pulls back, smiling with her whole form.
And taps the note still in my hand.
The paper is warm now.
Keep the rhythm.
She says it without speaking.
Keep the rhythm.

[Outro]
She turns back to her watering.
The notes on the leaves begin to glow with a soft, white light.
One by one, they detach and float upwards, orbiting my head like a crown of whispered music.
The room dissolves, but the note is still in my hand. I can feel the fold.