(Side of the highway on a winter’s night.)
Wrinkly hands tapped ash out of the driver’s side window of the old Chevy truck.
Grace had pulled over to the shoulder of the road and stopped the engine, listening.
The song.
The one that had been played at the school recital oh so many years ago.
She recalled it had just started playing when he sat down on a folding chair next to her. A stranger, then.
Deep inside, however, she had known there would be no more empty chairs next to her ever again.
Now, years later, it was just a song on the radio--played for the masses.
Grace thought angrily to him, "You can never be condensed to lyrics of a song . They do not express the curve of your smile, the movement of your hands, the depth of our lifetimes...You saw my most sacred moments. How is it I must now know them alone?”
Suddenly
A gust of wind came and snow blew silently through her open window, covering the empty seat beside her.
And she knew the chair wasn't empty.
Of course it wasn't.
