Silent Weeping

Prompt 9: Part 3

His fingers are still on me. He sighs, I sigh. I can tell he’s frustrated and under pressure; there’s been a lot of shouting going on lately, and he isn’t as gentle with me as he was two weeks ago.

I gently touch his finger and he jumps from the noise. My voice echoes and I wonder if I am heard; I don’t like him like this, all sad and brooding.

Finally, for the first time in many weeks, I am heard. He stares at me for a long time, before he begins to fiddle and play around with me, trying to combine sounds that I offer him in an order that seems appealing. I suggest this tune and that, he just nods absentmindedly.

He stopped for a while and I wondered if he was going to give up, until I heard him hum to a combination of sounds and chords that I offered. I smiled. He was getting back on track. He played, letting me digest the content and letting me listen.

The melody was bittersweet, and with bittersweet melodies comes bittersweet lyrics.

He stopped and I willed him to continue, willed him to hear me. I knew the words that could go with the music, I knew what was missing and what it was lacking.

I wondered briefly if he felt the desperation and words that came to the mind oozing from me, because he fished a pen out of his pocket and began to write on a shoddy, pathetic looking piece of paper.

He started to sing and I sang along with him. He was rough and his playing hurt me, but I put it aside for the moment. As long as he was playing again.

The lyrics were sung with his deep, baritone voice, and my low, contralto voice, blending into a perfect harmony; it was perfect.

He put me down and I saw him run out of the door, shoddy looking paper in hand.

I smiled, sad. I would always look at that paper; the one with his wonderful name on, the one that gave him an honourable title of composer and lyricist, and I would feel hurt, but only momentarily.

I had to put up my best show. I had to be happy in order for him to be happy.