The Ragged Edge of Night

by Olivia Hawker

The knotted cord that was his belt is there, too, coiled neatly upon itself, a sleeping serpent dreaming of lost Eden.

When you play music, when you put an instrument to your lips or merge your hands with ivory, the act transforms. It makes of you a conduit between Heaven and Earth.

Music is a way of transporting emotion from one breast to another. It is a way of knowing the unknowable, of feeling what we can never allow ourselves to confront in any other way. These agonies and ecstasies—they can break us, use us up, burn us away unless we shield our hearts with music.

We are fools to think the past remains in the past. History is our guilty conscience; it will not let us rest. Perhaps we will never learn the origin