She sits on the final steps of that worn, white back porch overlooking the crashing waves, as they lazily kiss the shore every now and then. She sits with a book laying in her lap and a look of wonder in her eye. The one she gave me when we first met, the one she’s given me every day since. It’s a look of reverence. A look of awe mixed with all the thoughts you can never decipher in that racing mind of hers. But there’s something else lingering in her gaze, in her movements on afternoons like this one. It’s an aura of peace, of clarity in just letting her bare feet dangle, barely grazing the soft blanketed grains of sand. She was never broken. She just left pieces of herself in every soul she ever touched. She spread herself thin, but somehow always had more to give. So when I watch as she sits and lets her eyes fall closed, I know she’s praising the melody the ocean is playing for her. She’s giving herself up to the sea through every eighth note that he plays, through every rythmic song he sings, heavy with melancholic harmonies. If I just let my mind wander I can still hear her.

Why do you do that?
Because everyone deserves to be heard. Everyone needs someone to care about the song they wish to sing.
Well no one seemed to care about the words she was humming. So she drowned in these stories, in the lives and souls of others, until she was a trace, a shell of herself. When I coaxed her to let the words slip from her lips, it was a serenade of devotion and strength. A symphony that entranced me and unleashed a world inside of her that she never knew. She was heard and there was nothing I wanted more than to listen, listen until her voice was hoarse. Listen until it was a mere whisper. Listen until there was nothing left to hear, but her slow breaths.
She was never broken.
I didn’t fix a thing.
Someone just finally listened to music her soul was playing.