He called me his harmonica.
A name I used to giggle and blush when uttered from his honey-colored lips.
I thought that meant I was his music.
He called me his harmonica.
And we seemed like a good pair in the beginning.
We completed one another.
He breathed his life into me and I performed ballads for him.
He called me his harmonica.
He had other instruments.
He had other instruments,
and he found that I no longer played the right notes.
He had learned all my songs and could play them by heart.
But to know something does not always mean to love.
He called me his harmonica.
I sat on the shelf collecting dust and my silver finish turned to rust.
I was a relic and he was interested in newer things.
He called me his harmonica.
I could not move if I wanted to.
I was inanimate without his air and I wish I learned to breath without him.
But his air was his alone and he left me suffocating
while he played the most beautiful music that I could never make.
He called me his harmonica.
Sometimes he’d pick me up and play me beside the campfire,
my music diluted with smoke and the remnants of an old forgotten song.
His friends would laugh and he would laugh and then he dropped me in the dirt.
I did not get the joke.
He called me his harmonica.
But he never picked me up.
I depended on him and he left me in the woods behind a trail of tire tracks.
He called me his harmonica.
Others picked me up, but I lost count of how many.
I played my songs and they had their laugh and they dropped me
back into my pillow of ashes.
I remind them of their past and they like me until they remember
the past can be painful and I am only a reminder of some unbearable memory
that cannot be uncovered.
They call me a harmonica.
I used to be a harmony.