Is The Father Of My Child Seeing Ghosts?

What Was Inside That Piano?

Strings & Spirits. 2025. Karina Pawlak. I made this from photographs I took. Scott overlaid against his piano with color filters.

I walk over to the piano. I press every key. Notes resonate through the apartment. “Nothing sounds broken,” I say.

“I told you what happened right?” Scott says from his sofa. The sofa that used to be our sofa. My parents bought it for us when I was pregnant. It was a lovely chocolate brown. It’s black now and roaches live inside.

“Yes, this is why I am pressing the keys,” I say.

Last week Scott told me that someone broke in and started cutting the strings off the piano. He said he told the guy to get out but the guy wouldn’t leave. Scott said he called the police, but by the time the police got there, the guy was gone.

There is a guy who drives around on garbage days and collects scrap metal and tin cans and whatever he thinks he can resell. I see him cut off cords and strip appliances. I remember once going with Scott to a scrapyard and selling copper he found during a demolition back when he worked. Copper goes for about five bucks a pound. An air conditioning unit has anywhere between two and four pounds of copper. A refrigerator maybe two. But piano strings?

Scott usually leaves his apartment unlocked. So it is easy to walk in. But to walk in and start cutting piano strings off an old dusty piano in…