[ IP ] Soldier plays an abandoned piano

The keys made no sound. Once upon a time Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky issued from the old upright, but abandoned in the woods, it no longer sang. The piano was once the prized possession of some family, who had been forced to flee. They had been forced to flee me. Why hadn ’ t I run? 
 
 
 Once I played the piano. Once my fingers traced the smooth keys that were always warm, no matter how cold the house was. My father had saved for two years to buy me that piano. It sits unplayed in an empty apartment in Moscow, a thousand miles away. Instead my fingers press against the cold body of a gun, their exposed tips burning against the frigid metal. 
 
 
 Once my hands made music, but now, like this piano, they do not. I plunk each key, hoping for one euphonious echo through the woods, but each key is dead. Inside the piano the strings that once created beautiful sounds have all snapped, leaving a mess of sharp wires and splintered dreams where music once lived. 
 
 
 My music today is a mix of confused percussion and a broken human orchestra. Staccato bursts like snare drums are occasionally interrupted by the soft whistle of a shell. The woodwinds and brass are replaced by the hoarse vocal chords of unnamed young men dying. The woods has a music all its own, but it is drowned out by the cacophony of war. It is overpowered by he screams of soldiers, who lay strewn around me: bleeding leaves of a late fall. 
 
 
 *Someone once said it takes three generations to make a great musician. The first works their whole life to make sure their children can live a better life. The second generation goes to school and is able to afford life ’ s little luxuries, like musical lessons for the third generation. This piano in the woods is all that remains of the second generation. I am the third generation. * 

