Mereana Latimer

I cut the octave into twelve even semitones. I cut the octave into twelve and take half steps around the piano, one-and-two-and-three-and Gregorian months and chants and days.

The octave is grey clay baked under pale winter sun. It thrums with an idle clarity that Ruth Crawford Seeger patiently transcribes.

Like my uncles, I only cut the octave when the ends are splitting. The octave is the hook that draws up fifteen islands. The octave, a song on the ocean that ribbons through hair, through jet black waves.

My approach to the octave is diatonic. Before I make the cut I arpeggiate, pretend I dream without chromatic alteration.

The octave as a life-span, a muffled composition. Ruth says There will be time in a way that ripples, eddies and echoes, turns a multitude of black keys grey.

I cut the growth at the roots into intricate steps. I divide the octave fifty-two ways, into sounds beyond sound, a high-pitched din in the silence.

Ruth raises her babies and I keep the octave in common company, marking the sounds as calendar days. The octave oscillates, augmented and diminished.

A net of my hair cast over the house, capturing resonance room by room. I carve my uncle’s double bass into fifty-five voiceless pieces, stashing the parts behind basement walls.

I cut the octave uneven. I cut the octave forty-seven years too short and make it common, cut a fringe across my mirror and round the house in common time.

The octave cuts in twenty-three divisions and holds quarter steps in dissonant thrum. The lift and drop of cyclic ‘imene, my uncles, Ruth, and the octave, a haunt below the house, a stack of papers on basement clay.

I cut the octave into multitudes and scatter it wide. I sing the octave until it glimmers, turns to shift and settle and shine.

My uncles, Ruth, and I sit with the octave, plucking at whiskers like rosined strings. If my nana was still around, I would cut the octave the way I cut my Kūki hair, holding a single note and letting it grow and grow and grow.