EATING THE FLUTE My mother told me she bought the flute from a homeless man for one hundred dollars. In nineteen seventy-seven, one hundred dollars more than it is now, and even then, the flute was old. If you know instruments, it was a Gemeinhardt. If you don’t, it was solid sterling silver and so heavy and beautiful once it was cleaned from twenty years of my mother’s tarnish that I couldn’t wait to play. I was not very good at the flute. When the band played with its seventh-grade bravado, the drums shook my chair, and if I was playing the music correctly, I couldn’t hear it. If you blow hard enough, a flute will let out a strangled squeak that will sound louder than the drums and the brass. Only something that wrong could be that loud. Continue reading
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