Five minutes ago, in a different part of the city. She was listening to a song she loved before she understood what it was about. Before the critical switches had flipped into discerning taste. When music was meretricious with visceral appeal. Cherished and chuckling wistfulness within one song. Just the wrong song. Or just the right song. Or a song that never meant anything to her in time, but embodied the cadence of her last truly free, unappreciated summer and that winter six years ago she worked at the ski hill. This was the span of her four minutes and twenty-six seconds. The remaining thirty-four seconds found the thread of a single scent weaving among the crowd. The smell of ten days in Greece and places she had never been.

There is a story I want to tell. Quietly. Right beside your ear. It is screaming underneath my skin and translates into whispers. I will lean close to tell you and your arms will fold around it. It will be all the bedtime stories you were ever (or never) read. But it doesn’t begin once upon a time. It begins tomorrow. Or yesterday. Five minutes ago. Next week. Some time around your eighth birthday and the party that didn’t go quite right. But you only have decades-old memories and a bitter form of nostalgia to relate. That’s where we’re going. Where I’ll take you. Perhaps where I’ll leave you.

Lean in. Curl your fingers in front of your mouth. Hold tight to that precious fist-full of your choice. I won’t ask you to let go. Ever.