'This is not piano..' Words by Sihle Sogaula An ancient sigh. Not sound, release, the loosening of something long held. The hand tries something. Not knowing what it seeks, only that it must move. It crosses itself, then, slower,  as if testing whether the surface will sustain. Marks gather the way years gather in a tree, each season drifting into the next, lines crossing like soft weather, nothing undone, everything carried forward. What has been touched stays close. What has been crossed through folds into what comes next. What accumulates begins to resemble intention. A word tries to rise It falters, caught between breath and form.  It says itself anyway. The hand stops to listen, and then returns to where it has been before,  moving along a path made smooth by passage,  worn like a desire line through tall grass,  held in the weft – the way warmth lingers after touch,  after a body leaves a bed,  after palms part. Where the hand slows, the line grows fuller.  Where it drifts lightly, the trace remains thin.  Other times it barely touches a note, a faint abrasion. Beneath a crossing lies every other crossing; the first heavy stroke, the uncertain one, the one made in longing, and finally the one laid down like prayer, slow, careful, hoping to be heard. And the hand realises, in the rise and fall of pressure, in the way rhythm stumbles into syncopation: this is not piano, this is dreaming. The hand leans in. The line sinks where other lines have made room — a small valley of meaning formed not by force, but return.  And in that return lives memory. Unsorted. Warm. Weighted. Breathing. Aware of every wound and every refuge. A word finally stands upright. It bears the ghost of every word that did not stay. It leans slightly, as if listening backward while moving forward. The hand releases it. The surface receives it like a body receives a scar: not as damage, it is proof of living. Somewhere inside the warp, the older lines stir. They recognise the newcomer. Make room. What is written does not replace what was. It is taken into what is already there. And together these lines begin to say something larger than intention — a story gathered, not chosen, rising from touch, from return, from what refused to disappear. The hand rests. The surface breathes. ​ Words by Sihle Sogaula