Tied quarter notes

It would start off with fireworks. No – scratch that. Fighter jets. They’d spin and dip and twirl over the small bedroom. It’d almost be unbelievable but the creaking of the twin-size bed would be enough for the illusion. Creak. Creak. Muffled cries would drown out in the background. Wet kisses would swim from lip to lip like dandelions fluttering through the rain. It’d be music. For a while, shrimps would really taste like jazz and elegant ballroom dresses would whisper Beethoven. And when two bodies would clap in a symphony of love and lust, the beginnings of the greatest composition would begin.

Stretching of clothes would follow. No one would know yet, not even them. Piss would give it all away. It would sing, “Pissssssssss,” and no one would be ashamed to hum it back.

Throw up. That’d be next. Then: an F-sharp. Fuck. It’d be a sudden, rush of fluid pyrotechnics, uncontrollable as the vulgarity that followed. As viscous as smoke yet as palpable as fire, it would never make it to the toilet. The prebiotic soup would remain on the floor as smells would diffuse throughout the room. In between the chunks, the colours, and the left-over remains of digestion, there would be a future. And only a woman would know it. She’d smile, and a drop of potato-bile would ooze from her chin.

After sitting there for what seemed like an eternity, or at least nine moths of one, she’d clean it up, whispering, “The whole of the Universe is found in digestion.” Life, she’d tell herself, is just vomit.

Tears would soon drop like atoms bombs, decimating the colonies of dust underneath. Contained within each drop of salt and water would be a million of words, aspirations, and memories. She’d remember boarding a plane with love in her heart but hope in her feet. She’d recall waking up in a country she chose to call home, and feeling completely alone. She’d revisit that day when her first child was born and she understood that it took pain to create happiness, and that with happiness came the inevitability for greater pain. A man would come home as she dug deeper into the catacombs of her mind. They’d meet eyes, and he’d use a hug to make her feel as though she was as close to his heart as she could ever be.

Together, they’d orchestrate a life. The rhythm of dates, growth, and debt would tick at an immeasurable pace. Diapers. Carriages. Bottles. Clothes. Room. Shoes. Bottles. The necessities of naturally selected life in an otherwise artificial world.

It would all be planned. There would be no hiccups. No improvisations. It would be a perfect symphony, at least on paper. But like all things, they’d learn that sometimes it is better to play by ear, because together, the two would be playing for two.

Tied quarter notes, the doctor would say. Or maybe he’d croon the words. Either way, he would tell my parents that twins would be born, that tied quarter notes make a whole, and he would be left with silence that would ring louder than any music ever could.

I’d like to believe that I entered the world with cymbals a’crashing and drums a’banging and flutes a’whistling but I didn’t. Heart monitors chimed me in. Beep, beep. I remained silent as the bustle of, “It’s a boy” and “We don’t think he’ll make it” whirled around me. Maybe I would have said something – a murmur, a yelp, a signal that I was alive – if I was named first instead of being segregated and analyzed. Maybe if someone greeted me with a smile instead of a pull, I’d frown less. Maybe, if someone said, “Babies, welcome to the world. It’s big and it’s divided. There’s water in some places and land in others. There’s not much we know beside that, really, except that we are the only ones who know all this and the only ones who forget about it just the same,” things would’ve been different today.

Maybe.

But it was my favourite author who said that the only evidence for god he needed was music; my mother only needed the sound of two babies crying. Because in life, the only soundtrack that ever matters is the one we compose – the one that life creates.