by Rory Perkins
On our first date Danny rocked out behind the kebab place on a broken guitar. Got properly into it. It must have been filthy, thrown out by some disheartened teenager. You’ll love this one, he said and started jumping off the walls of the alleyway. I played along, bopped my head and mouthed made up lyrics. He said it would be our song, the silence we had filled with our separate imaginations.
On our second date he took me to Seville. Said his company would pay and it wasn’t a big deal, not to get scared off. We walked through the Plaza de Espana and talked about religion, how neither of us could be sure. Overlooking the water, he pulled out a broken harmonica and started to play. It sounded painful, the way he forced his breath through the misshapen tubes. Wind on metal on flesh. He asked if I knew the tune. I smiled and said, of course, it’s the greatest love song ever written.
At the hotel he traced the outline of my body. We were naked but not entwined. I expected sex, passionate and life-changing. Instead we spent the night hovering above one another, not quite touching, letting our minds do the rest.
On our third date he told me he was dying, on one knee. Asked me to marry him and bury him all in one breath. I took the imaginary ring and pulled him into an embrace, the only answer he needed.
He never asked the doctors how long he had left. Pretended like every day was his last. For our sixth date he took me to Paris and wrote a song about the wedding we would never have. Joined a band and performed to empty rooms with the speakers turned down low. In Venice I woke up to the silence of him serenading me. Saw the gondola below and him coughing into the broken harmonica, sounding out the greatest love song ever written.
Our seventh date was his funeral. As they covered his body in dirt, the priest spoke of the unknown. How everyone has their own version of God and sometimes He doesn’t talk back. I don’t know about all that. I saw the light die behind Danny’s eyes and felt the music stop. On the journey home I pull over and start to cry. Turn the radio to static and listen to all the things he never got to say to me. My own kind of prayer.
Rory Perkins is a British writer focusing on shorter works. He has been published in Vast Literary Press, SoFloPoJo, Passengers Journal, and Artam’s The Face Project (forthcoming). He can be found at @roryperkinswriter on X.