Monday Minute Challenge

Here's my entry for the Monday Minutes Challenge. I'm using the items prompt: rose, necklace, and piano. I submitted that one. Yay! 300 words.

Layers have dust have gathered on that old piano now. I remember when I got it, how the light reflected off the snow white keys. Even now, I can replay the fresh sound of the piano in my mind. It used to fill the room with every kind of feeling—joyfulness, sorrow, adoration, pain.

Nothing comes of it now, not one note. Sometimes I’m tempted to play one, just to hear the sound again. The temptation disappears as soon as it comes. For I know it would be ear shattering since it hasn’t been tuned in years.

Max, my brother, visited once. His eyes widen at the sight of the instrument that was often used. “Play it, Aria,” he demanded.

I grabbed his arm before he could touch the delicate keys. “I haven’t touched it in forever. It’s useless now.”

He yanks his hand away from mine. “No, it’s not,” he insisted. In seconds, he slides on the bench. Music came out of the thing. It was soft and scratchy, but music just the same.

When he finished, he stood up. “Just because it’s been silent for awhile doesn’t mean it’s broken.”

He didn’t ask about the wilted rose lying on the wood. We both know why that’s there. What  he noticed was the necklace next to it. “Did he give that to you?”

My eyes drop down to the cold metal, the broken chain. “No.”

He tried to grab my hand, but I pull it out of his reach. “Why do you keep it then?”

I look back at it. “It was cheap, but I got it because I thought it was pretty. It reminds me never to invest in something not worth my time.”

Now when I get that temptation to play, I give into it. Music again.

If you would, please pray for the creator of Monday Minutes Challenge and an amazing author, Tessa Emily Hall. She wrote on her blog today that she has Type 1 diabetes. She wrote Purple Moon, one of the best YA Christian books I've ever read. Thanks! She also does a lot her blog followers and fans. An example is the Monday Minute Challenge.