Not a Robot

Written December 2008.

A wall of B minor in reverberating synth: inscrutable, oblique, obsessively restrained. Motion suggesting itself first in the tension of the lower back, rolling up the spine and over, around the shoulders, barely a shudder before the sound rolls off the fingers. A tilt of the cheek aligns the cave of his ear with the monitor and he freezes in his sneakers, toes rolled under, white-knuckled and lock-kneed, the only movement a twitch of a taut shoulderblade careening down through arm-gristle to a trembling hand on the keys.