Listening

Music and games echo across the forest, laughter and ghosts gathering around every stone, rough-made table, and happy root. A rough line winds through the forest, ghost upon ghost weaving through the trees, languages, beers, music, waiting.
Steps jerky, breathing uneven, a man walks into a circle of trees. The music of the line fades, distant and strange, the vivid green of the place seeping into his soul. The air is clearer than anything he’s ever tasted.
Speak.
He sways, the request filling his thoughts. We will listen.
I — I don’t —
They breathe.
I miss her. His heart pauses for a moment, content.
I miss her.
She cared for me, this one week, this entire week — he laughs, shakes his head — and I couldn’t do anything.
This story, he asks himself, I’ve waited so long and this is where I fumble? Thoughts play beneath his words, color and texture to his tale. I kept rolling to puke, but she’d laugh and talk about cooking as she held me. My retching with recommended oven usage is forever etched here.
Her voice. Lord. Her voice, it was like listening to my soul’s music. Sometimes I couldn’t hear her, just because I was listening too hard, if that — well, I. God, she was beautiful and her — his throat tightens, he looks away. The endless greens of the leaves sooth him, the weave between bark and root and tree. He shakes his head and blinks.
I couldn’t be with her, even when she was there. Distracted or, or just — gone? And then I came here. And I can’t — please — what is her name? God.
I’ve come and can’t remember her name, I can’t — please. Do you know her?
Breathing.
Maria.
Fell from his lips, unbidden and demanded, loved, forlorn, lost. Maria. Maria. Do you — he stops himself.
Does she—
Does she remember me? Winter, the breath of snow, holding our son?
The bite of hot food, her pies, her sister or, or the smoke in our house in winter? Or me? The sunshine on us or against us, the breeze — warmth — us —
Is she here?
No, whispered the branches and his heart. No.
He covers his face, breathing unevenly, shoulders shaking, eyes and heart failing. I come all this way and she isn’t. He smiles, rough face, grey, ghostly, dead. Hands fall.
That week, he blinks. He listens, the hope of summer on his words. That week I was sick.
He laughs, hand rough across his nose. Our son, he cooked something and didn’t do it right. She taught us both how to that week, while we sat bed-ridden and unable to move. I watched her move and stir and work, so patient and efficient and forever.
I watched her hands and listened. I remember burning my fingers and lips with tears in my eyes and I remember it happily and wish, if only.
Can I—
No. The trees chuckle, silent within this place of telling.
No.
He laughs and shrugs. Okay.
It’s quiet.
He looks up, blinking hard, staring far into their branches, the sky barely visible, darkness coming, the moon peeking through the blue and green. He sighs, looking down. He closes his eyes. He breathes. His shoulders relax.
He feels his heart unwind.
Okay. He smiles. And breathes.
A moment, forever and nothing, and he’s gone. Gone. The sun shines where he stood, dappled, the trees whisper their music for a son, husband, human, ghost who shared its story and finally, finally let it go.
They breathe his memory. They keep it, savor it, sing it.
A ghost takes a step in, mouth open, awestruck. He breathes and forgets his words.
Speak, they whisper. We will listen.
