Sixty minutes…

Such a finite amount of time for what could be an infinite expression…

Composing the heart for a composition, stuck on beginning and finishing… How when the words that are to occur will not be those not of my own… He thought to himself… Can I allow fragments of my soul to be mapped out all over sung by another for none other than her…

Just then composition became a confused manifestation of desire and a loss for words, so he played the blank cassette in search of them… the decay of what was once silence became filled by the soft brush of textured silence coming from the magnetic strip and the cadence of rushing bodies water the left him lost, but found in comfort…

He fell to the floor from the hypnotic wave of a whisper surging throughout the room. He was only out for about a half hour, the whisper still in the room he picked himself up only to stare directly at the tape deck. He looked closer and saw the wheels of the cassette still turning… He had just experienced so much joy without a single word being passed.

So he sent her the blank tape with a simple note that read… “listen to your heart…”

They had to pry the pen from his hand when they found him…

No signs of struggle upon first glance, but then again he wasn’t without life… His breaths simply shallow but upon looking into his eyes, one could see he was wading in the depths of his soul…

He laid there motionless… running through every single moment spent with her… Reliving every kiss, touch and words exchanged… All the down to the first awkward glance when they first met…

Still.. motionless… Stillness of emotions nothing less than pure… thoughts that would could be described as nothing other than fragments that manifest in the power of love…

But now she was gone… His body weak from the overdose of thoughts that syphoned his very will… But not before he wrote every experience shared to page… With one last thought that when she reads this, I can forever live in her memory now…

He took one last breath and let go…

Every day Jonathan greeted the bus driver with a smile and a nearly inaudible good morning as he stepped into the doorway. He caught the bus just two stations away from the beginning of the line so it was always pretty vacant, except for a little girl who’s recently been sitting sat at the very back of the bus everyday. ‘Most likely a latch key kid’ Jonathan would often think to himself and then go about his routine of walking to the middle of the bus dusting off a seat, sitting down and then slowly sip his coffee as he gazed out the window at the world going by. This morning however had something different in store for the mild mannered soft spoken gentleman for shortly after he sat down and had his first taste of coffee, the driver ran over a deep pot hole that rumbled the bus with the force of a contained earthquake that caused Jonathan to grip the cup tightly popping the lid and spilling all over himself.

“Sorry” said the bus driver as he recovered from the rumble himself as he pulled up to the next bus stop. Jonathan stood up brushed himself off and quickly found another seat not covered in coffee at the back of the bus as other patrons boarded. His new seat was not positioned to where he could easily look out of the window, but instead it was facing the little girl that was on the bus before him.

Not being one for odd interactions Jonathan attempted to gaze out of the window behind him but found it awkward twisting his body and angling his neck without strain. So he took a deep breath, repositioned and looked straight ahead in the direction of the little girl which as if by a gentle force caused him to look directly at her.

She wore pink rain boots with a raincoat to match, her hair was black; pulled into a ponytail and her eyes were a deep brown that of an old oak tree. Around her neck she wore a brass pendant in the shape of trumpet that looked an awful lot like the one he bought his wife that had passed away some months ago after a battle with cancer. He bought it to remind her of the night they met at a jazz club after he performed “There is no Greater Love” by Miles Davis. She loved to hear Jonathan play, in fact that night is why she fell in love with him but during her struggle with the sickness he hardly found the strength to do so and following her death not at all.

Lost in this haze of thought Jonathan hadn’t taken notice that his stop had come and that already off the bus. He crossed the street then turned to look back at the bus to see if he could still see the little girl, but she had vanished. In the window however read the word “Play”.

He carried her memory.

Intimate moments of silence sit between whispers of the soul when the body is at rest… when we close our eyes and try to clear our minds or think about the day, losing our presence in the night… missing the opportunity to catch fireflies and moonbeams… open your eyes and be my lover and I your dreamer… and see that yellow and blue make… yellow and blue make… yellow and blue make… something we share… a connection far from illusion… reaching out without a frog singing a song but if there were we’d both look and become lost in the sweet dissonance of twangs and a river running beneath us… how sweet life is when you taste it… search for a succulent to prick yourself awake hoping that the succulence of your experience never leaves your lips… that it never leaves your life… I could lose myself in the way you see me… so now as promised I will dream for you and write what I see…

Miles away but never closer to my heart… within the space between, my soul has traveled the distance to be present and feel your smile… upon its return I can feel where it has been… it tells me just how far I can go and instructs me on how to whisper your name… neither the beginning of an end or the end of a beginning… the journey of what love is… constantly in time and space… smile away