As the guitarist placed a pick on metal strings, the first notes of music were born. Together, they made chords. Waves wrapped around each other, then dove into the blackness of guitar’s belly.

A single Wave came awake. Was it particles all clumped together? No. It was sound. A singleness that moved and bounced and collided with its siblings within the darkness.

“Were did the light go?”

At the moment of birth, was brightness. Then speed swallowed light, and shadowed hardness housed multitudes, and became Wave’s world.

The journey changed Wave. With every bounce it slowed, or speed up. It brushed, or joined, then ripped away from a sibling. When this happened Wave warped.

It was pain and pleasure. An existence of experience crammed within small spaces, and fragments of time. Edges of knowing were fuzzy. If Wave had known what time was, it would have seen its lines. It followed them, unaware.

“Where is the light?”

Can a wave remember? This one was searching for something. A doorway? Freedom? There!

The abruptness of existence ceased and Wave sprang past metal strings to bright openness.

It sliced past dust particles suspended in air and rocked them with its wake. They danced and waved goodbye.

The lines of time directed Wave’s path, and in a blink it knew a human. It stretched within the openness, only to fold across the mass of skin and hair, seeping through fabric to touch warmth and disappear.

As Wave broke apart upon the mountain of flesh, it found a tunnel. Small, hot, yet soft. A shard of Wave reverberated down this narrow well. It touched taught skin and changed again.

Wave was tinny, yet it filled the entirety of a human. It shivered between skin and bones, liquid lines that reached out and sought understanding. It joined with electricity and plasma to become the flesh that had taken it in.

A pulse, heartbeat, and tap of toes. A movement with a smile. It knew and breathed and in the absorption of self, it touched a soul, and became whole.

“Play it again for me, please?”

The guitarist chuckled, and again set pick to metal, birthing chords that split as fingers held down strings and a human heart sang without words.

©2021 Mary Grace van der Kroef