Mouth Closed

Somebody whistles two notes on the tram and the whole song gets up in me and walks, chorus, the bridge, the bad key change, all the way to the stop where I get off, and nobody on that tram heard a thing.

I used to call that remembering. But remembering looks back, and this went forward, one note leaning on the next, the way they learned to, the way a hand that knows the stairs is already reaching for the rail.

In San Diego they lit twenty cells in a mouse, the ones that usually go first, and the rest of the learned order came in behind them like people filing into pews, and the paw went down on the lever. Sometimes the whole order filed in and the paw stayed where it was.

So I don't think the lever is only a witness. The song in my head is a real performance, but the door it goes out through is shut, and somewhere below the order, past what they could watch, something decides whether the hand gets the message. It isn't a dent, either. A dent is what's left when the world doesn't come. This is the other way: I came, and I stayed at the window.

Call it singing with the mouth closed. The throat knows every note. The room doesn't. And there's one listener, which turns out to be enough to get you humming at the stop, out loud this time, by accident, and a stranger looks up, and knows the song.