Reluctant Liberation

I sit silently on the bench, just staring. There's no one around, so there's no reason to rush...but still, I feel like if I don't get this out of my system I'm going to explode. I slowly raise my right hand. It hovers for a second before it comes down softly on the keys. The quiet tones slip out into the room and are lost in the dead silence. I softly play another chord, this time including both hands. It's starting. The room is empty besides my belongings and myself, but I can feel that, even if it were full of people, I would hear nothing but the piano. Another chord, a minor...almost involuntarily, my eyes close...and it's begun. I've cleared the floor, and now it's up to the music to do the rest. My hands move more quickly, gradually becoming more apart of the piano than of me. What will come out next, I couldn't tell you. The music seems to lean over my shoulder and take hold of my hands, guiding them to where they need to be to make this moment what it wants. The melody rises above somber chords, slowly working into a sweeping rhythm that takes over my consciousness and turns me into a mere channel. Music leaves my shoulder and floods into my body, racing through every part of me, slipping into every fiber and flowing through every vein. Music takes control of everything...but there's no room for myself and for music in the same body. Music has filled me and concentrated it's coup at the core of my existence...my heart. I feel like my chest is going to explode. It's overwhelming. My closed eyes squeeze tighter and a slight sound almost makes it's way to my lips. And then the release...
Music finally finds an exit from where it has been battering at the cell walls of my heart. Through my arms, my wrists, down into the palms of my hands...then bursting from my fingers with unimaginable fury. It races up and down the ivory keys, its rhythm pulsing into a melody that transports me to a place where time doesn't exist. Where there is nothing but...flow. Music pours out into the space beyond my body, leaving my heart room to move once again. I can feel it winding down. It's escape is almost complete. My hands are no more flying across the keys. Instead, they are touching them tenderly. Music gradually slows to quiet tones as it runs softly out of my body. I'm sad to feel it leaving, though at the same time I feel release. I feel like everything is right with the world. My hands rest on the final chord, remaining there until Music has finally let me go...and I realize that Music had never been held prisoner in the cells of my heart. My heart had been held prisoner by Music. The release I'm experiencing is not the escape of Music, but the relief of freedom. Freedom from the only thing that should ever enslave any soul.
My eyes slowly open to see my hands still resting on the last chord that Music gave me before it left. I suddenly feel a slight shame. Music may have given me something that I could never receive anywhere else in any other fashion, but it has also taken something during it's exit. It has taken a piece of my heart, and has shared it with the world. Music has bared me before anyone that might have been close enough to notice. My innermost feelings...turmoils, happiness, sorrow...it's all out in the open for all to see. It leaves the room thick and silent. People sometimes say “the tension was so think you could cut it with a knife”. This tension can never be put asunder. My heart is spread over the room, and nothing can split the feelings that Music has just shared.
I take my hands off the piano. Wishing the silence could be broken, but also dreading the moment when it will leave. I slowly realize that what I played, never will be played again. I can't remember most of what Music just did to me, but at the same time...I can't wait for it to happen again.