Strings

I was up late last night.
He had come over to stand in the hollow corners covered with posters beneath my slanted roof tops.
He sat on a chair and began to move his wrists, to pluck the strings of an acoustic
making all the music that I never could.
"Hey can I listen with you?"
I don't want my ears to close up just because I'm not beautiful
or just because I'm not worth it.
he bends over all his melodic notes and plays for me the songs of yesterday.
He chuckles when he misses a chord
but his ears stay silent as he knows when the music flows.
I cross my legs and feel a warmth rise up in me as he plays me this sacred knowledge.
His passion makes me smile.
The happiness of simplicity crashes around his strings and makes them throng with something as heavy as the sun and as genuine as a Christmas morning.
I touch the walls of this night because they're coming closer.
We're making last week seem like a race we both finished and tied.
I'm thinking now that maybe it was.
I write this in a rush of gratitude at not having to feel rushed.
Poetry falls from my eyelashes like sound leaks through the calluses on his fingers.
We both have dreams to live life with the little things
that happen in mornings, evenings and afternoons
on summer days
or between snowflakes.
He lays back in a chair and tells me that someday, someone is going to remember me because
I'm a memory.
I tell him that he might have just made my day.
I tell God that night to bless this kid with a word from Jesus so that he might have a reason to stay awake in mornings.
And also that he might remember this day.
and keep humming these songs tomorrow
so that I can hear them echoing across that race that we won
and those dreams that we shared
all just until the snow finally falls on me.
And so I hear my prayer being lead back to me
and I know that as long as I don't let my ears close up,
whether about being beautiful or for worth,
I will always hear the beauty that walks around me.