By Connor Horton
I turned the dial, and it began. A clatter of noise, like coarse stones dragged across a plain of silence before the waters rose and flooded my world with colors. The hues, they shifted and scattered into white space as words and tones became paved stones and a smiling face, tears in memoriam of worlds lost and stories told. Rain fell on grass fields while along the road leaves fell and memories marched by with old broken barns and hay bales. Cattle raised their heads as if to greet me, and the rhythm moved in a dance that only she and I could possibly see. The outline of her young face broke from the glassy waters of my mind before the lights shifted and we were together again, holding hands on the way to class. The hallway lights and school tiles blurred. Then petrichor, sweet and bitter and alive as rain like the drums of this song played against the roof of my old car while we made love, deep, nestled within the folds of autumn. I pulled into her driveway. In the dusk the headlights faded as the dash radio switched off. But in my mind the music still lingered like scraps of some ancient hope, some age-old passion wisened, perhaps, into love. I walked over brittle leaves and rapped on her door. It pulled open, and there was her face, a pale and weathered orb against the dim. Her eyes, brown and tightened by forty years, were as alive and shining as those times. Her lips pulled into a smile, and I realized in those brief moments that she was as beautiful as I remembered. She said, “Hello.”