---
date: 2022-11-07T09:21:21.000+00:00
hero_image: "piano.jpg"
title: Thank you for the piano lessons
author: Sally Émerzian

---
You're downstairs and you can't play,  
But you're playing "Strangers In The Night".  
For me, it's a school night.  
Tomorrow is another day on the front line  
Another bloody battle against the world you put me in, then shielded me from.  
The awkward notes are far apart  
Guesses echoing in the hallway  
Against bare walls and marble floors  
Like lonely people.  
Tonight if I sleep early, tomorrow if I listen carefully,  
I might learn all the things you'd have liked to, for you, for me, for me... for you  
The burden's heavy on my little heart.  
It's counting time, breaking apart  
With every new skill you gift me with your time, with my time  
Now it's bedtime already but hey, at at least I hear you.  
And now I'm your age already but I still see you,  
Under that spotlight, behind the piano, below the staircase  
The outline of your kind shoulders cast in a mahogany glow  
One well-meaning hand figuring out the next note  
Til I grow up to be all the things you'd guessed for me.  
All those great things that should have made it all worth it  
For all the strangers in the night.