An old friend

In two years' time, I will go to university and begin my life as an adult. With this transition I will forever leave the house, but more importantly, I will forever leave a memory.

There is little at home that I left an imprint on. My name is written in tiny letters on my bathroom window, and written again on the bottom of our sofa. But these imprints are insignificant, and when I look at them I remember only moments of boredom. The only object in the house that I can call my own in terms of emotion, in terms of memory, would be my piano.

Out of my carelessness, and then out of habit, I very rarely took the trouble to wipe it down. The thousand fingerprints were a source of all my teachers' aggravation, but now it serves as an album. I can see a faded smear of my elementary-school hand across the piano cover, left from when I opened the piano for the first time and heard the full colors of each note. On one of the glossy black legs there is a double print of my little brother's and my fingers, pressed there when I joined him to play underneath the piano. The lid has lost its lustre, and is dulled under seven years' worth of prints from lifting and closing. There are a 9-year-old's prints smudged next to a 16-year-old's prints. Hundreds of piano pieces have been played into the strings, their echo in my memory. I can sit at the bench and reach for the keys, as I have done for over ten years, and feel the songs in my fingers.

The piano, by now, is my oldest friend. I must leave it behind when I go to university, and with it, lose a bastion of memories. I will feel the presence of it fade away from my hands until it becomes, finally, only a reminder of my childhood.