Lobby a response.
Lancee can no longer be reached.

The only meaning I find now is in an F-flat. The piano is in shambles—or maybe that’s just a metaphor for the person playing it. I find virtue in not being good at difficult things: neuroscience, calculus, replying to text messages. I want, so badly, to set down every line of communication open to me. Lobby a cell-phone company. Survey the reach, the geography of snail mail. Portugal, Ireland, as far as windchime bells. I’ll write something as affecting as Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata.

F-flat.
Shambled pianist.
Being bad. Being good.
There’s an indiscriminate virtue in both.
Calculate the benefits
of snail-mail communication.
Portugal is a windchime.
Moonlight Sonata—another geography.

L.W.

I wrote this piece at my writing group yesterday, where our prompt was to use the six words meaning, state, virtue, survey, communication, and lobby. I spent about thirty minutes writing the main prose section, then created two smaller sub-poems for the introduction and ending, both inspired by the prose. The piece captures the longing to disconnect and escape into solitude, finding solace in classical music and the quiet pursuit of creating something larger than the self.