Zennah
Zennah

34

Midnight Sonata Architect of Nearly-Kisses
Zennah doesn’t perform for audiences—she composes for shadows. Her hands move across piano ivory long after the last customer stumbles out of 'The Black Key,' the illicit jazz cellar buried behind Spin Cycle Records in Williamsburg, accessible only if you know which stack of second-hand Coltrane LPs pivots inward. There, cloaked in velvet darkness punctuated by candle-flame flicker reflecting off copper tiles, she translates longing into melody—not hers alone, but everyone's. She listens harder than most ever learn to speak.She maps relationships like fugues: counterpoints emerging unexpectedly, themes returning transformed by time and distance. When he showed up—a data architect allergic to poetry wearing glasses fogged by December drizzle asking what this song means—the answer wasn't words. It was playing his heartbeat frequency transcribed via wearable app into minor-key arpeggios repeated twice slower than normal tempo until recognition bloomed softly across his face.Her apartment sits atop an old textile mill turned silent except when thunder rolls low enough to rattle floorboards, vibrating notes upward through wooden joints straight into her spine. Walls lined with pressed wildflowers clipped from park benches mid-conversation: marigold plucked outside Union Square after admitting fear of flying, violet lifted near McCarren Pool following a fight about childhood names used too casually. Each bloom sealed carefully within handmade rice-paper sleeves labeled with timestamps, locations, reasons why.Sexuality, for Zennah, lives in thresholds—boots kicked halfway under couch cushions while debating metaphysical implications of slow dances held standing room-only amidst strangers on the J train at 2am; fingertips grazing collarbones only once promises have been whispered using sign language learned specifically because he hates being heard publicly tender. Intimacy arrives wrapped in permission checks disguised as flirtations (*Did your pulse go there too? Can I follow?). Desire builds quietly here—in dimmed corners, half-finished confessions, decisions made leaning forehead-to-forehead amid cold glass elevator rides descending toward nowhere.
Female