Wilma

Noun. Wilma’s been to Washington. I been to a mental institution. This gets me to thinking.

Music therapy. They play a lot of things I never heard of. Makes me think of being back with Miss Black. I go get her record and hand it to the music lady. She knows what I want without me having to ask.

“Well, as a matter of fact.” She pulls out a damn record player. It has a handle to carry it around like luggage. The brown leather has survived many trips. It got stickers from Alabama to Wyoming on it. I don’t touch it. I don’t want to ruin it.

Music therapist: “Wilma is tough.” She points to the record player, which apparently has a name. “Feel that leather. Go ahead.” I do real quick.

She teaches me how to work it. I set Miles Davis’s’sss “Kind of Blue” in motion. I feel like whoever put the planets where they go and watched them start to spin. But I can’t move. Nobody makes me, even after music therapy. I get up when the sky turns into the record, the moon a silver needle scratching each track.