**(Lyrics in this chapter are inspired by Cardigan(by Taylor Swift) ie. Lyrics are mine)

The weather is frigid outside. She pulls the lapels of her coat closer as she walks, her nose and cheeks red from the cold. After a draining breakdown induced nap, she couldn't tolerate staying indoors any longer which lead her to where she is, currently wandering the streets aimlessly. There aren't really many people outside and the ones outside are occupied in their own thoughts and actions. It feels serene even if it is not the brand of peace she is seeking. Still raw and with uneven edges, being a face in the minimal crowd and left to your own devices feels refreshing.

A turn to the left has her deviating from the main street but it does not bring the pang of dread it usually would if she were back home. She strolls further, her hands in her pocket, despite it being a street she hasn't really explored before. This is precisely when the strummed notes of a guitar being played reach her ears, their melody a breeze of momentary comfort in the tinge of melancholy they carry. It makes her halt right outside an ajar door of what looks , from whatever can be seen, like a mini-studio.
Right when she makes to look inside, the melody transitions with a voice that strikes her right within her heart, freezing her to the spot.

Vintage dreams, lonely home,
cloud of loss, crafted tomb,
When I was young and afraid, she left me.

I cried and cried, pleaded too,
take me along to where you're off to,
But I was a young memoir so she left me.

For she knew me,
like a spring flower
too harsh a candor.
She knew me,
precious no longer ,
because it was the autumn.
So I became the old cardigan thrown away,
a garish parody she regrets,
She no longer needed me, he became her favourite!
_

Music is a language that comes with the dialect of symphony alongside the graphemes. It makes you feel something, be it good or bad, love or hate, grief or bliss etc. It is the power of words strung with a melody to them, enhancing the impact and inadvertently entangling a dangling chord to any heart that finds it familiar. Music is arid summer and it is torrential rain. But most of all, music is as personal as it is public because the meaning and impact of each song differs for each heart.

To her heart, his music sounds like a call she has inadvertently waited for whole life but never really realized. To her heart, his voice sounds like the oasis to the mirage she has chased all along. To her heart, his words and the pain in each note sounds like finding a heart that knows anguish in the same shade she does.

Her steps that froze a moment back find life as she moves inside, uncaring about the courtesy of knocking and if she is barging in or not. The magic of his music is coursing through her veins and she cannot not know the face behind the voice. She cannot not know who he is. So very unlike her, she cannot halt her steps from stepping into his haven because she understands it is so from just his music, because she knows an outlet and a coping mechanism when she looks at one.

She cannot so she steps in.

It is indeed a studio but it isn't exactly too big. A piano is all she manages to see before her gaze meets a pair of midnight black and time stills as does the music. There is surprise in them alongside the same agony that permeated every taal and lai ( लय) of the song he just sang. The very air around him feels like his companion in his affliction that plagues him.
_

With his fingers halted on the guitar, he is rooted to where he is seated, before her sudden appearance. Her eyes are a shade of caramel brown tinged with red. They hold a melancholy that reflects the starting notes he strung for his song. He cannot bring himself to look away, to question who she is and how she even got in for he does not remember leaving the door open, because there is an eager restlessness in the way she barged in, like she just had to see.

There is just silence between them as they look at each other but a conversation ensues nonetheless. It is said eyes are the mirror of the soul and they speak a truth that is irrefutable. It remains with them as well.

His fingers unfreeze on the guitar then and holding her gaze, he continues the song he paused.

A broken heart, an abandoned son,
she left me at an inescapable prison,
yet I thought amidst it she would still help me.

But I should have known,
I meant a weed against her darling sown,
I should have known,
the callous hold of societal status
So I remained an old cardigan under a crumpled bed,
She never put me on, I remained an uncleaned mess.

To be seen and taken away was all I needed,
There are no stars around my scars and I'm still bleeding!

Cause I know the truth,
the exile of a raw bruise,
perjury, the estranged triumph.
a picture broken, a crochet unspun,
my singed vestiges in everything broken.
this melody I sing haunts me like it'll never do, to her and him ,
away away from them but I rot in the prism they've entrapped me in.
Like an old cardigan, thrown away amidst a rotting mess,
she left me there and forgot I deserved my breath!

____________________________________

Love,
Pratyusha