Little petals fell from the tree above us;
their paths were so long they were narrow and so unpredictable they had to have been predetermined.
An invisible breeze traveled through our hands, heads, and hearts.

I looked to my lover on the left of me.
The teal and yellow sky behind her,
paired with the little pink flowers just out of focus casted a speckled shadow on her face.
Her eyes conveyed sadness
but smile held strong.
Cigarette burns were pressed onto her flushed skin.
It was warm but she wore a black cardigan
with a feathery collared shirt below it.

“I stopped singing years ago,”
she chirped up.
Her words did not address me
and neither did her gaze;
both floated on the wind just the same as the petals did.
“I don’t cut it,”
lies,
“my notes crack,
I can’t sing as high as I should,
even in church I’d fear I might just stumble like a clumsy fool.”

Still,
sure as ever,
her voice carried a sweet melody that ran their fingers through my hair while they swam in the wind.
Each vowel held a hidden harmony.

“Really, there’s nothing to it-
that’s what they say.
The rhymes and rhythm were all out of place, but I stayed,”
her throat grew firm, yet full of cheer forevermore,
“Until I didn’t.”

She turned to face me but something stopped her.
Perhaps the wind,
perhaps herself.
“I suppose I must’ve stopped once you’d gone.”
Her bronze hair shook on her head and she pulled her legs up,
creating small waves in the grass
just as her voice had.
“Words didn’t mean the same, neither did any music I could share.
‘Pity,’
they’d say,
‘such a beautifully sad thing that you gave up,’ they’d say.
And I do think it true,”
admitted she whilst resting
her arms atop her knees,
chin atop her arms, and
head atop her chin.
“I did,”
she strained her words as soft as syrup,
“give up.”
Her back moved to and fro’, pressing against the bark of the apple tree
then not,
then pressed,
then not.
“What is an artist without drive?
A singer, when she can’t hear her own music?”

“Pity,”
said I,
“such a beautifully sad thing you don’t recognize yourself.”
My head shook like the branches above.
“What a smith you are, love.
You say your voice cracks,
yet each pitch it jumps onto is more delicate than the last.
You claim inability to reach the top,
but you can sing for yourself.”
My lover’s velvet covered legs pulled closer to her chest and she lifted her eyes to listen.
“I’m not necessary for your song.”

“What, pray tell, do you mean, love?”

“I reckon you never did stop singing.”