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Write me a love song without the word love in it, she demands, crossing her arms. Short hair ruffled like a halo against the speckled wall because there is no bedhead. Just the mattress, low and near the ground, heavily indented with the shape of someone else's body. She stays on her side. I'll tell you a secret, she says suggestively. Then, penitent, afraid she has promised more than she can give - Did you know the earth sings in Db major? That's the background resonance... Have you ever made love to a man with a Gloucester accent? he strums. She laughs. No. You should try it one day. How is it? Fuckingood. Pluckily with a dirty ragged thumbnail. Almost moody. She wants to ask - Why, have you, but he gets up abruptly and the mattress flushes upwards. Walks across the gold-wooden board floor to play a dischordantchord on the piano in the corner of the airy studio room. Anyone can play the piano. But not anyone can make the piano laugh, make it cry, make it sing. And the hardest thing to do is to make it ask the question you both fear and need to know the answer to. This thought is in her mind as she listens. She listens and she turns her eyes upwards to the ceiling so all he can see is the bottom curve of her eyeballs and the whites of her eyes. So he doesn't see that she is fighting back tears. Yearsoftears. So that he can pretend not to see. The disharmony asks: Do you know your lovers' back can you trace the geometry of their skin score the key of their vibrations know the sharps and the flats and the tempo of their deepsleep breathing? He is her lover but not the one she loves. Cover story by Krystin Low since June 24 '04