The narrator attends a party while a loved one enthusiastically shares ambitious plans to pursue music, auditions, and travel, and the narrator feels withdrawn and longing. The narrator secretly wishes to vanish into the loved one and then follows advice by wearing dark glasses and walking to the shore, attempting a poem that falters. The narrator hears a picnic remark that a poem will not provide salvation, walks into the cold sea, and later visits an auction of grand pianos where musicological chatter and memories surface. Solitude brings relief from the loved one’s quoted theories and power struggles.
It was cold and dark; we arrived too fast. I hate parties. Your grandmother stood in the kitchen, looking mythological, hands crossed on her apron. You said you had to mingle. Later, you came up to me, where I was sitting on the stairs. You were so happy. You told me all your new plans, to train for the concert stage, undergo harrowing auditions, travel the world. On your forehead shone your soul. I had
Next day, I donned dark glasses (your advice), left the house, and went down to the shore. "You think a real poem will save you," you had said to me that day at the picnic. "This is an error!" You puny swallow, I thought. I walked into the sea. It was as cold as stars. What a long morning. My poem was going nowhere. I took the bus to an auction of grand pianos.
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