My aunt my momma’s sister
She had a real good
Piano had it right
in her front room there
She lived just up the street I used to
when I was a boy / I used to hide in her
bushes when she was giving lessons
just to hear her play
I don’t know why I hid
She loved Chopin and all of them
She and my momma had some differences between them
One morning I walk over
because I know she has a lesson coming
But when I get there her front door it’s
wide / Open and I don’t hear no
music just a few
bad notes but not bad
like a child was learning them
I sat in the bushes anyway just waiting for a while
But I got bored you know the way
A boy gets bored it’s like he gets more
interested at the same time but in far off things
So I peek through the window
And then I see it her front room it’s all tore up
Some fool I guess
had robbed her / Busted her things up busted her
piano too / Just to be mean I guess my
Aunt she’s just sitting on the bench
staring at nothing
but she must have heard me / Because she turns and smiles and she
starts to stand up she leans forward she takes her / Hands
they was resting on the keyboard from the keyboard / And grips the front edge of the bench
I watch her hands but at the same time I see every part of her and every part of her
Looks bigger like I’m focused on it / Like if you made a picture of a woman
From cut up pictures from a magazine
And nothing fits together but it’s her but I don’t recognize her
And shit man I don’t know
what it was but I never will forget it shit my heart
Starts pounding and
I / All of a sudden I can’t breathe and I
Run I run home I run so hard I throw up
Soon as I shut the front door right there / Got my ass whipped for that
But not for running but for throwing up
I told my momma everything and all she did was shake her head / And you know
Mmm mmm mmm and What / A shame and she went back to what she had been
Doing in the kitchen
How can nothing be the same if you don’t talk like nothing’s different
Anyway naw I never learned to play no banjo
In the movies I just
wiggled my fingers
and they laid the music over me