Once upon a time, there was a girl. 

She played music with paintbrushes in her lungs, color floating up through every outlet. When she played, her mind sent blackberry runners into the world, spiky and sweet. When she played, people took to clutching their children closer; taking out handkerchiefs for their summer-rain tears. And she could be sitting on a whole note, mulling it over, and her audience wept, for what she was really playing was, "I've been lying this whole time, and our relationship did ruin our friendship, and I'm sorry for all the hurt I've caused you, and for all the ways in which my heart fails" or skipping between the skyscrapers of space between dotted eighth rests, and really saying "To be around you is to feel like I'm dying of overexposure to being alive." 

She could be playing the saddest song in the world, and strange laughs would erupt out of the listeners; because she was remembering the time he had made her smile when she thought nothing would for a long while. 

The girl grew older, learned to listen, learned to hold back to protect people.

To adopt the mannerisms of a different world. 

And one day, the girl couldn't play-- couldn't make sound come out of anything she put her breath to. She borrowed a cello, took the bow to it, and thought only, Possibly I should not have done that, and people rubbed their elbows and sighed and said that maybe it was an off day.

And the light went out.

And the moths floated away, untethered.