I sit at my piano
Alone, surrounded by a night world I cannot see.
If it is looking back through the window at me,
I cannot tell.

I'm by myself, yet somehow under the stare of the world's eye,
bared before the blinding light of a thousand spotlights:
and yet feel so uniquely alone.

But I look to the black and white ribbon before my fingers
and I know I am not on my own.

If anyone, anything is watching they see not a pianist,
only someone who has learned to cooperate with a piano
that is just as temperamental as she is.
A piano that hardly knows what emotion to feel,
a piano that was doing fine solo but is thrown off now that someone else is on the scene.

Somewhere amid the struggle between us
We can find balance, my piano and I,
a balance that waits patiently to be found.

And this delicate hold, once found, this dance of black and white and girl
of forte, of piano, of the last diminuendo-
is what the world sees
through my unshaded window.