Three Golden Latches

Three golden latches
Bind the past inside.
Dare to open it—
Release what is hidden,
Revisit the wounds hastily patched.

No good will come of it…
Or perhaps
A sliver of redemption.
But to risk it
Is to acknowledge the loss.

Three clicks.

The safeguards fall away,
Guardians of a fragile soul.
The lid resists—
Heavy as memory,
Hinged to a heart still learning
How to open.

Polished wood glints
In pale, patient light—
Untouched, undisturbed, unchanged.

I cannot say the same.

Hand on the neck,
Phantom fingers shadow mine—
Out of tune, out of practice.
Turning, tension, tightening, tuning—
Metal bites at softened skin,
As memory shapes discipline once known.

And then—
A chord.

Not perfect,
But present.

Harmony hums
Through familiar forms,
Carrying unfinished stories,
Songs I never dared to finish.

Years have waited in this box,
Silent but not forgotten—
Every note still willing to ring.

I left it closed
The day you were born.

My son, my son—

I thought if I kept the music buried,
I could bury the moment too—
The weight of you in my arms,
And the unbearable lightness
When they were empty again.

But grief has its own rhythm.
It finds me in the silence,
In the spaces between chords,
In the notes that almost resolve
But never do.

And now I know—
No song will bring you back,
No melody will let me hold you again,
No harmony can mend
What was taken in a breath.

Still…

My hands remember you.

In every trembling string,
In every note that breaks beneath my fingers,
I feel the echo of those forty-three minutes—
A lifetime
That will not return.

So I play—
Not because it heals,
Not because it restores,

But because it hurts
In a way that sounds like love.

And I am afraid
If I ever stop,

I might lose
Even that.