The boy dressed in black
Is well-loved by his family
They’re there, and they care
But somewhere, in their subconscious minds,
They breathe,
“This is not what we hoped for…
We wanted so much more…
We wanted so much more”

The boy sits in the corner
Alone, and afraid
“Come,” says teacher “Tell me your name,”
As the children sneer and snicker
The boy puts his face to his knees
He sighs…He sighs…

The children laugh, the children poke fun
“He’s only different,” says teacher
“He can’t think or speak like we do”
But the children can’t stop smiles
From creeping up the corners of their mouths
And the boy knows better:
He hears every word
He longs to call out…shout out…
But he can only thrash out
Time out…time out

To them, the boy was different
The boy was strange
But himself was all he knew
They looked down
And he frowned
The teasing, the ridicule
It was just too much
He needed an escape…an escape

The boy found what his heart longed for
And what his mind needed
In music
It called to him
And he could not resist the pull of its rope,
The tightness of its grasp
Music pulled him deeper
Into rhymes and rhythms he swam,
Into melodies he sank
He was engulfed…he was engulfed

The strumming of his very first string
The striking of his very first key
It brought tears of joy to his eyes
It was his time to shine…
His time to shine.

I sit here in the audience
And the boy dressed in black
Slithers onto the stage,
Sunken eyes to his shoes,
But his face to the light
Deep breaths…deep breaths

The audience buzzes
The audience hums
But is shocked into silence
The sounds of the boy’s piano
Are too colorful to capture,
Too beautiful to bear,
Too magical to make into words…
Far too magical

The music pours from his fingers
Like rain from the sky
But the music originates from somewhere else:
From his heart
And somewhere, in the dark recesses of his mind,
There is something powerful,
Something wonderful,
Something bursting with life…
Like a single pink flower
In the dry, barren desert
There is hope…there is hope.

If we look hard enough,
We find that we, too, have this greatness within us
For this boy, we simply had to look a bit deeper…
Deeper