Guitar, Floated Gently

Another panicked morning—the ledger of a life I've forgotten how to balance—and as I rushed out of one deadline and toward another I became aware of my husband's guitar, a Spanish song. It doesn't matter how many years you've been married; you stop for that. You stop and you remember the first time you heard him play (a borrowed room), or the once you sang together (a mirrored room), or all those hours in the kitchen, while you've chopped the celery or stirred a pot and he's sat one room away, balanced on the arm of the leather couch, singing softly to himself.

When my husband plays guitar and sings, he drifts, he floats, he dissolves the now, and this morning, listening, I thought of how a musician's journey is like a writer's journey—how necessary vanishing is within the walls of home.