A Wish For Us

by Tillie Cole

watched him from my pillow and wondered how he had fallen so perfectly into my life. How I’d been so lucky. How God had heard my whispered prayers.

“You gave me back music,” I said. Bonnie blinked at the sudden change in conversation. Then her face melted. I took a deep inhale. “It was you, Farraday. You gave me back what I’d lost.” I ran my thumb over her bottom lip as her eyes glistened. “It was you who brought the music back to my heart.” I paused, trying to find the words to say what I meant. I had to settle for, “You helped my music rediscover its soul.”

“How is it possible, Cromwell?” She took in a shallow wheezy breath. “How can a heart be so damaged, yet feel so impossibly full? How can a heart be failing when it’s filled with so much life?”

Cromwell put the stethoscope over his heart, but this time he gave me the earbuds. The sound of his beating heart pounded into my ears. And I smiled. This was the music of his heart. “Beautiful,” I said. I could have listened to it all day.

When the threat of death hung over you, you realized that your true dreams weren’t so grand. And they all came down to one thing—love. Material possessions and idealistic goals faded away like a dying star. Love was what remained. Life’s purpose was to love.

Bonnie was it for me. The only one who understood me. I loved her. And I was going to lose her.

I believed that when someone was so imbedded in your heart, your soul, they never truly left.

Chest wracking with my love for Cromwell Dean, the boy I met on the beach in Brighton. The boy I loved with my entire soul. The boy who had created a symphony just for me.