Chelsea Hanna Cohen
Prelude
For our sixth date, I take him to the field behind my home where the music grazes, swirls of song hovering over patches of grass. “They need the energy to grow,” I explain as he stands there, awed. “Listen,” and I take his hand and lead him near a wall of the house, where a cloud of notes has just settled. Their music is a low hum at first, but as the grass stands on end and strains toward the sound, it grows louder, the transfusion of energy ballooning the sound into something grander.
“This is incredible,” he says, and my heart lifts. I’d been so nervous to bring him here, so nervous that he wouldn’t appreciate it, or that he’d see it only as something to take advantage of. The only other partner I’ve ever brought here came back with bottles while I was sleeping, tried to trap the music so he could sell it. But the music knows how to protect itself: I awoke that night as every song crescendoed at once until he could do nothing but cover his ears and run.
“Some kids get lullabies, I got my mother taking me out into the field and rocking me next to whichever song was quietest,” I tell him.
He walks forward, and I stay by the wall and watch. He stops at every song, listens to what it has to offer, trails his fingers through their auras. A flurry of sound rises, surrounding him in glittery wings as it whirls around his body. “They trust you,” I say softly, but he can’t hear me.
I watch the music embrace him, welcome him in, and the image of him in the center of its maelstrom, head thrown back, eyes closed, will stick with me through our eighth, ninth, tenth dates, through when we stop counting, through marriage, through children, through grandchildren, right up until the moment many years from now when he tells me he’s ready, when I kiss his dry lips, when I help him out to the field, when the songs engulfs us in minor, when the music and I wrap ourselves around him and hold him one last time.
Chelsea Hanna Cohen
Chelsea Hanna Cohen fixes grammar for a living and lives in the desert with two cats, a piano, and too many books. Her work has previously appeared in Bourbon Penn, Flash Fiction Online, and Split Lip Magazine, among others. You can find her on social media @chelseahannac.