Off Stage

The past reached out and wrapped itself around my heart this weekend. In the guise of faces long loved and voices whose timbre and power can carry whole auditoriums filled with people, carry them away into places most people only dream of. People whose eyes are filled with magic and whose every move is choreographed to draw you in. People that others stand up and applaud for.

But not this weekend.

This weekend, they wrapped each other and me in arms just as plain as those your mother used to hold you close. This weekend they told me stories in the light of a fire that barely matched the warmth in their faces. This weekend we sat around a table just like old times, eating chili and sharing pie and letting our shoulders rub close to each other for the first time in ages.

And when the fire died down and most people went home, one continued to play with an energy that picked me up and carried me away. Any little part that was left behind, latched onto the harmony that crept in and rounded it out. This weekend I went home, not to the place where I was born, or to the people whose blood runs in my veins, but to those who simply hold my heart.