— soprano recorder · plastic, three pieces —
the cheapest possible instrument. cream-coloured plastic dressed up as wood. three pieces, twist-fit, with a small cork at each joint that has hardened to almost nothing. it lies on the top shelf of a wardrobe in the room that used to be a child's.
the labium is chipped on one corner. there are tiny tooth-marks on the mouthpiece. the seven holes are dark and clean. inside the bore, a single small leaf — possibly bay — that fell in at some point and stayed. the bag it lived in was navy with a yellow drawstring. the bag is somewhere else now.
the child played three tunes on it — london's burning, hot cross buns, and one melody no one has names for that may have been her own. she put it away the summer she turned eleven and has not asked for it since. when no one is listening it makes no sound at all — the recorder is the most honest instrument: without breath, it is just a tube. but the tube remembers, and on certain evenings a passing draught at the wardrobe door produces a single thin almost-note, halfway between humming and a whisper.
field-note: the small leaf inside the bore has not moved in eleven years.