STRUMMING

--Bismarck
The accident had been quick: the smacking of cars, raging horns, a thunderous clash, abrupt stop. The woman inside barely remember it. The nurse had just left the room when the roman woke up. A week had passed. She was alone for five minutes.  

Five minutes to force herself to remember the accident.

Her first inkling was a name: Andre.

Andre was yellow, spicy foods, warm hugs. The woman remembered a brawny guitar and how Andre’s fingers danced over the strings. Numerous memories of the dulcet music flooded to her brain, so many that the woman felt nauseous.

There was Andre the Youth, staggering under the weight of the instrument. An infantine grin stretched across his face, one that made his hunch less daunting. “It’s not too heavy,” he told her as he swayed to dangerous angles.

There was Andre the Teenager who sat with the guitar on his lap, laughing as the woman tried to mimic the complicated finger patterns. The cacophony the woman made disturbed the other students in the cafeteria, but Andre did not care. With a sly pucker of lips, he directed the woman again, a loving ring in his voice as he said, “No worries, Katarina. You’ll get it soon.”

Andre the College Student shone the strongest. Red lips were up turned in a delighted visage as he watched his dorm mates stand one by one in awed reverence. The woman wondered how those lips tasted, whether they were bitter apples or sweet cherries. It was not the first time she wondered it, that much the woman knew. It would not be her last.

Andre the Boyfriend was painful to watch. He held hands with those of a pianist—callous gold entwined with tenuous white. His music was no longer the strumming of the guitar. It was the praises for the pianist. When he walked the woman to her apartment, he confessed to her that he loved the pale girl. With a smile, he said he wanted to marry her.

Andre the Fiancé was too painful to bear. There was no guitar to numb them. He had long forgotten how to pluck the strings and feel the vibration buzz his limbs. He practiced the song of marriage, looking forward to becoming a father.

The woman had been invited to the wedding.

Dread made her late. Love made her speed through the intersection. A marriage of the two made her crash.

Five minutes disappeared as quickly as they came. The nurse and the doctor found the woman awake and eyes opened. They silently fussed over her, checking the bandage that held her brains in her head. The doctors’ lips moved. In another life, the woman might have known what they said, but right now they were soundless, mere forms moving gracefully across a screen. They waited for her to answer. None came. A doctor with green eyes craned his head to his nurses, seemingly shouting. Her world was a comforting quiet.

Comforting, but she wanted the roar of the guitar. She wanted Andre to sit by her bed and play his instrument once again. She wanted to be with the one person whom she could remember.

She made to ask the doctor where Andre and his guitar was.  

The woman's mouth opened but no sound came out.

Copyright 2014 M.Daniele