Reuven plays the guitar downstairs.

The melodies are quiet and deep soul songs lost songs.

Songs he thinks no one hears but hopes they hear though he wouldn’t dare let them.

One string is missing the bottom one but it’s been missing for months maybe even a year. No one remembers the string after they put down the guitar.

The days pass too quickly.

And the songs are forgotten until a dreamer happens home and takes out his wooden companion.

Upstairs is dark. A dim Bordeaux-shaded nightlight illuminates the room.

It was a day.

Nothing unusual just a little tricky and slippery. Long and arduous with many alleyways and dead ends. Or so it seems.

The guitar-playing starts to go from soothing to annoying when the player knows some one’s listening. It becomes a different song the strum too hard and uneven fingers hitting too close to the bridges.

Upstairs it’s quiet. The heater blows every so often.

The chords get fuzzier.

His calluses must have softened from not playing in years not since the last time someone listened.

He always wondered why he couldn’t play in public. Why others just belted it out. I explained when he was younger that when it’s so close to the heart or the soul — I don’t remember what I said now — that it’s hard to let it out because it’s your real song and that’s scary.

The favorite one he played — “Want to be free like the ocean higher than the moon faster than light but who am I?”

He plays it slow. His brothers play it fast.

But when he plays his face changes into an angel’s.

The notes start to fade.

He was up north today in the snow the snow that falls on the top of Mount Hermon. Some friend had a car and they drove and drove as far as they could to the end of the country.

The trip made him calm come back to himself.

If the guitar were the background music to a movie someone might be packing a suitcase leaving an old beloved town. Riding on a bus to a new city. Or maybe a door would be closing and someone would be left behind and the shadows would slowly fade as the cameras pull further and further away to a long shot of the whole house a mansion with lonely gardens and green grass.

More people come home dishes clatter and he keeps playing.

The music plays louder over the chicken over the kitchen cacophony.

He strums instead of picking. The strums get harder and harder. The sound tinnier and tinnier.

Every one talks over the music.

Reuven gets tired and lazily starts to strum Spanish serenatas.

The phone rings. He stops. Puts down the guitar on the corner of the couch.

He goes to sleep kind of dragging his heavy feet.

I just want to say to explain to comfort.

“It’s okay” I start. “Some days are like this.”