One night in Paris, I’m reading myself to sleep with the story of the romance between Verlaine and Rimbaud which resulted in a rainy hip-hop farce in the train station. The poets have an angry exchange and Verlaine pulls out a gun and Rimbaud yells for a cop. I remember how I memorized Verlaine’s poetry to impress you when we first met. In the distance, I hear the music of Monk playing softly, like a soundtrack to the book I’m reading.

I close my book, give up on trying to sleep, and I feel sorry for myself as I remember the sad time before I met you. Like the music, you came into my life softly at first but once I realized you were there I confessed all my life you’d been there all along. Now, you lurk in the silence and I can’t pretend I don’t hear you so I pretend that the silence hears me. Two years before Monk’s death, critic Orrin Keenews calls to ask if he is touching the piano anymore but Monk says no and that he doesn’t want to try. His willful silence is powerful. 

It rains in the city and I’m driving blind down the flooded highway. I remember a rainy night when you drive us and I navigate to your apartment, but I miss the exit and you shout and Monk is on the radio, filling the silence after your shouting subsides. You drop me off at my hotel downtown instead. Once, I ask Monk what love is and he said you can never get enough of it, even when you have more than you can handle. Having known love before, Monk says I’m ahead of the game but also scared to death by memories of how sweet it is. 

I believe that at birth each of us receives an invisible ladder we’re meant to climb. We start with baby steps but as we get the hang of it our steps become bolder until it’s as easy as breathing. When your love starts falling, don’t blame a missing rung because the ladder’s still there. 

One night in Paris, I’m reading myself to sleep and I hear the silence of the rain, like a natural break  in a line of verse. After the gunshot, Verlaine is whisked to jail and Rimbaud recovers and heads south towards silence. Monk speaks many languages and the same sound can have different meanings and produce different silences in each. After he finishes playing, everyone in the joint is happy and he sits mutely. You, me, and Monk are all silent. 

I wonder if you’re in your apartment and how long your hair is. A taxi driver from your hometown told me your father died. Picturing you always seems easy until I try and it becomes more of an emotion of longing than an image in my head. My silence is sometimes broken by Monk’s music, but my silence is not expectant like his, it is about letting myself lose you. When I listen to Monk, I hear you tiptoeing in and out of my heart.

At 3:30 a.m., I am still awake and aching silently for you. When Monk finishes work right before dawn, he crosses 57th street and people pour out of hotel lobbies carrying umbrellas. A uniformed brass band marches and people form a line while twelve white horses pull Monk’s coffin down Broadway. In my dream, we’re kissing goodbye when Monk arrives, first through music and then physically. Monk calls him crazy for putting words in his mouth and saying he retreated to silence. He dismisses me with a wave of his hand and, when it’s time, he will play the note we wait for and it will be a wonder.