Walking in silence through the nest of headphone cables, dodging pigeons and detritus as she picks her way through the tangle of closed minds. She lets her ear guide her on days like today, days where she doesn’t need a place to hide away. She walks past shops whilst buses and taxis produce their every day noise.
Roaming where she wants to, from busy streets to quieter parks. Over head the birds sing out and the wind cries as it rustles leaves, sweeping through the trees. Kites on a string reach the highest heights.
She keeps to herself, just trying to keep her head screwed on, philosophising some.
She stops to sit on a bench that is picked out for her in sunlight, she rests her bones, knowing the loneliness won’t leave her alone. She lets the warmth wash over her and listens to the world as it turns, as it quietly sings in its long forgotten tongue.
The chords progress, minor turns major, reflecting the sunbeams all around her, visions in chromatic wonder.
She closes her eyes and starts to hum a broken melody, back and forth, over and over. She ignores this as best she can, she is practised in this routine now, letting the notes seep in and be accepted for what they are. She knows not to force it. She sits there as the sun beats down, just lets it be. She wonders. There is still a light that shines on me, shine on until tomorrow.
A cacophony of little children run past her, all giggles and shouts, tiny feet pound out staccato steps that she stores away.
The sun fades as she rises from the bench. Dazzled by the change of light she heads home, as the pregnant sounds kick and writhe in her head.
Home and her head is full of voices, she can only hope her house holds no lies. She picks up her guitar and strums, trying to capture the melody, coaxing it out into the light once more. She adjusts her fingers, maybe here? No. Here. There, there. She can feel it beginning now and knows she is safe to capture it. She plucks a pencil from the table and marks down some notations, her looping forms tumble and fall like dice.
She plays it again, letting it adjust itself, feeling the hooks growing as starts to pick up pace, the cadence and rhythm start to emerge as the music is born, another badly strung declaration, gently smiling.
Months later, she watches from behind her keyboard as the light breaks over the crowd before her. The moments of recognition as a trumpet heralds the melody writ large. The syncopated beat mirrored by the shuffling crowd, older than children in body but never in mind. Strings breeze in as the melody builds. She watches the faces, some with eyes closed and upturned to the ceiling, like a hundred flowers searching for the sun.
Like a lost woman who found herself on a park bench.