Hard of hearing

I heard the harmony again in the chorus. On the inside of my ear, not the outside.

No one taught me to sing harmony. I could just hear it, but then suddenly it was gone. It was around the time that we lived in the place with the front porch that I loved and the peonies whose hearts bled fuchsia. They exploded out of the ground almost as soon as the snow melted but that was the way that it was there: a tyranny of ice followed by a tsunami of sweat. When I try to recall the moment I stopped hearing the harmony inside of my ear, it’s that street that I remember: seven houses long on our side with the small apartment block on the end closest to the river whose surface burst in the spring. They laid dynamite all over it.

I am walking toward the river when I realise for the first time that I am hearing everything differently. I’m on my way to do the thing that I was convinced was mine to do and I felt—wanted—willed that this was the way to do it but I couldn’t find harmony anymore, inside of my ear. Not with my headphones in the heavy heat nor teetering up the ice. Not while working in my studio with the stereo up loud, alone or close to the others. You’re having a good time in there, the undergrad painter said without any envy. I was having a good time but I couldn’t hear harmony.

All this time that I haven’t heard harmony on the inside of my ear, not the outside, I’ve been apologising for things that weren’t worthy of apologies or criticism, like earnestness, ambition or enjoying the colour pink. Ten years of apologies, building up like a sheet of ice. It’s so thick that it looks like it’s frozen all the way through. I get that people think that but down below, at the bottom, there is movement. The workers who lay the dynamite know it. They know when they release the charge that there will be something left to carry away the pieces.

I heard the harmony again on Wednesday afternoon. On the inside of my ear, not the outside. It was the low register, the one the never strains my voice. I was washing residue out of the kitchen sink. Chunks of cauliflower had created a blockage. I picked the big ones out with my fingers and let the inconsequential disappear in the current.