Music

Is still so hard for me. It was our love language, how we ached for one another, how we wooed, preened one another’s feathers. My eyes flutter shut when I remember the smell and taste of her under me while we listened to our love story playlist. How she would call me “Grasshopper”. How it made me blush every time.

Music was our love language in how we’d sway in tune with each other in the kitchen, touching each other’s hair in passing, our hips brushing each other until electricity sizzled between us. How she’d pull me in for a kiss. How I’d rest my head on her shoulder. How safe I felt closing my eyes with her.

I’d pore over new music releases and send her my favorites from that day. She’d play them for me again when we rode in her truck together, singing them to me. I’d know then she listened to them over and over again, that they belonged to “Us” now, that we’d never hear them again without feeling that exact moment. The fresh breeze scented with hay as we sailed down the highway. The way she’d catch me watching her. How I loved to make her feel beautiful. Handsome. How it felt my heart was out there, walking on two legs beside me.

We were our music. We were the swells and rolling melodies, we were the dancing with fire spinning under starlight to our favorite songs. We were the pounding of the beat as we drove to one another from our separate homes. We were the lyrics we got wrong and right again and sang wrong anyway. We were the pulsing throbbing of our heartbeats until we couldn’t hold them in anymore and they spilled out with the happiness of it all, wetting our cheeks. We were so lucky to have one another, the angels looked down at us and sighed “At last”.

The last time I drove away from her it took three days. I stopped listening to our music. I didn’t notice how silent the days were until my mind paused for a moment and let me breathe, and suddenly I couldn’t get enough air inside me. I gulped like I was famished, there wasn’t enough. If I stop to think I still can’t. When I listen to music I’m drowning. Leaning against a wall because I can’t hold myself up anymore I’m sinking standing straight remembering her shoulders and how they taste. How she’d hum beneath her breath without knowing. How her every movement was a song playing so I only could hear it.

I let myself listen to music today. I found a new artist, even. I got excited about her voice and her message. I listened and cried for the joy of it.

And I turned it off again.