inhaling the sound

I am trying to be honest because I think
you think
I am.

Last Friday the President’s Own Marine Band gave a free concert at the high school. S and I found seats in the second row and this was good. I felt that. The band, as an ensemble, is probably as close to perfect as I will ever hear. One of the pieces they played was music from the Firebird Suite, and as I kept being struck by the wholeness of their sound and the redness of their uniforms. It was so real that I lost my body and unconsciously grabbed onto S’s arm and buried my face in his shoulder. And then I looked up and saw that S himself was hanging by a wire and then he was crying—tears running down his face. The music was that big, that close, that beautiful. It got him. I do love him so much when he’s feeling music that way. He hears and feels sounds differently than most people do—much stronger even than me. Me, breathing deep to inhale the music, goosebumps coating my arms. I’m still not as open to it as he is. I’m still not quite as close to understanding how this all comes together. I sat there with my head against his shoulder thinking that a year from right then we’d be escaping somewhere together on our honeymoon. Probably somewhere mild and cheap (sadly) but escaping even so, and we’d be able to just be for days. Him, me, our selfs, our newness. It’s going to feel similar, I think, to the way the finale of the Firebird Suite sounded.