Ten years ago today,
she tuned her guitar in the passenger seat,
strings humming like nerves,
like hope.
He smelled faintly of pine and cold air,
a boy who knew dawn by heart,
who could stand perfectly still
and listen until the woods spoke back.
She talked in melodies,
hands always moving,
as if the world might fall quiet
if she stopped making sound.
He listened the way hunters do—
patient, precise,
catching what mattered
between the beats of her words.
Their first date was small and brave:
coffee gone lukewarm,
laughing too loud,
two lives circling something unnamed.
Her songs hadn’t found their chorus yet.
His compass still pointed home.
But somehow, sitting there,
they both aimed true.
Ten years later,
the music is deeper,
the woods more familiar.
They’ve learned each other’s silences. She longs for more of him.
She still plays—now for keeps.
He still watches the light change.
And every January twenty-third,
the past lifts its head gently,
like a deer at the edge of the clearing,
like a song just beginning,
reminding them both
of the moment they first chose to heal.
