The Guitar Playing Cowboy

He never arrived the ordinary way.

No horse at the gate. No spurs clinking. No gravel crunching beneath hooves. If anyone had been watching from a distance, they would have sworn nothing approached at all.

Because first...she felt him.

Not sound.

Not movement.

A low hum beneath her ribs, a tremor threading through her soul, a vibration older than memory. The room leaned inward, as if the walls themselves awaited him. Time paused and inhaled.

It always began inside her before it ever touched the world.

She would pause mid-breath. Mid-thought. Mid-line of poetry.

Her fingers would still. Her pulse would listen.

Something was aligning.

Something was returning.

Home.

Only after the hum had settled deep into her soul would the second sensation arrive- the one that belonged to the world outside.

A soft, steady heartbeat of a motorcycle somewhere just beyond sight.

Not approaching.

Not leaving.

Just...waiting.

And then he would be there.

Standing in the doorway, or leaning against the porch rail, or already seated in the chair by the west window, as if he had never left.

Helmet in hand. Dust on boots. Guitar slung low across his broad shoulder.

Always at dusk.

Always the same quiet, unhurried breath his eyes found hers-confirming something sacred had not forgotten while he'd been gone.

That was the ritual.

He came.

She prepared.

He played.

He left.

And nothing in between ever truly belonged to her.

He looked like a cowboy, though the plains were gone replaced by highways stretching across invisible horizons.

His motorcycle was black as midnight, bold, menacing, hot and rumbling, but not trembling.

The guitar case was older than the bike. Smelled slightly of bar smoke, dirty strings, and rain washed dreams.

But it was his voice that burned itself into memory.

He was not merely a country singer.

HE- W A S- the country.

A voice people crossed the country to hear. A voice that drifted through late-night radio static, through highways and byways, through lonely hearts, and through the secret places of the soul. It made strangers pull their cars to the side of the road without realizing they had left bitumen, and the world as they new it.

It was less a performance than revelation.

Deep.

Smooth as silk drawn over bare skin.

Heavy enough to lift the weight of grief.

Soft enough to cradle a heart.

And potent enough to drown your soul.

When he sang, it did not feel manufactured.

It felt "organic".

She had been known long before he appeared.

Not for sound.

Not for language.

A poet folded into margins, into whispered recitations, letters never sent, metaphors borrowed by strangers who had no right to them. Her words lived in coat pockets, pressed between pages, carried across continents in invisible breath.

She did not perform emotion.

She distilled it.

She did not raise her voice.

She made silence speak.

He was the voice.

She was the meaning.

He carried sound across distance-low, velvet, undeniable.

Romantic poetry believed that if two souls ever truly belonged together, something complete would form. Something final. Something whole.

A poem given breath.

A voice given soul.

History spoke volumes and should have been enough.

And for a long time..

It was.

Until it wasn't.

When the hum settled into her soul, she rose without thinking.

Preparation was never hurried. Never anxious. It was careful, reverent, almost ceremonial-tending a fragile ritual that could not survive neglect.

She opened the west windows first, letting the sunset pour in like liquid gold. The heartfelt welcoming of a time-traveller passing through.

Then to her bedroom.

The same dress every time-red, off the shoulder, sliding across collarbones like it remembered the whisper of his words. Both worn soft, faded to the color of lips and hearts on fire. She brushed her long blonde hair with slow, patient strokes until it felt like sunlight down her back. Sometimes she braided a thin strand, letting the rest flow free. Sometimes not. There were no rules. Only feelings and moments.

At her vanity, she opened the small velvet box.

Large gold hoops.

Always the same pair.

His favourite.

She slid them through her ears, small halos catching the dying light, circling her face as she breathed.

A touch of rose oil at her wrists.

Bare feet on the cool floorboards.

Then back to the rocking chair.

The front porch.

The candle-thin, consumed-flickered in her hands.

Two mugs set on the table, though he never drank more than a sip.

She sat.

Hands in her pockets.

Back straight but not rigid.

Waiting-not like someone expecting a visitor...

But like a soul about to be remembered.

Only then did the motorcycle hum deepen in the air.

And he would appear.

The first time, she thought he was lost.

He stepped inside, laid his guitar on the table, ran fingers through his strings.

The note emerged, filled the room like sunlight in cold water-slow, complete, undeniable, quenching her thirst. Her soul trembled with a familiarity she had never lived through.

"There you are," she said.

"Thats the sound of you," He said.

She should have asked him to leave.

Instead, she made more coffee.

And the ritual began.

On the first encounter, he told her he loved her soul.

Before they met.

Not her eyes.

Not her body.

Not her brilliance.

Her soul.

"You burn steady," he said. "Most people flicker".

She asked where he sang when he left.

"Towns," he said. "Stages".

"Rooms with people who don't know who I am".

"Or who they are".

"Or what they are waiting for".

Then, after a pause-

"lives".

He entertained others.

She never had to ask.

She heard it in his songs.

Each return carried traces of other rooms, other laughter, other promises made in distant cities. A ring sometimes. A name sometimes. Perfume sometimes.

He never hid it.

He never explained why performance didn't begin and end with her.

And she never asked.

Because the ritual remained untouched this way.

He came.

She Prepared.

He played.

She fell

He left.

At first the music filled a void.

It opened her soul, made it luminous, expanded, almost transparent. His voice poured like liquid gold, pressing into her pulse, her lungs, her soul.

But gradually...

The music no longer filled.

It drew.

Each visit left a hollow inside her soul. Not pain. Not loss. Just absence. A soft vacancy where something once lived without her knowing it had weight.

One night, she felt it clearly.

A thin thread lifting from her soul.

The plucking of her heart.

Lovingly.

Shockingly.

"Does it cost you anything?" she asked once.

He did not stop playing.

"Yes".

"What?"

"Everything that keeps me human".

Her poetry changed.

Fewer words.

More space.

More silence than language.

Readers called it her most powerful work.

They did not know why.

He remained unchanged.

If anything, his voice deepened-layered, vast, filled with landscapes no one could name. Crowds swore hearing his music felt like coming home to nest whils't flying away at the same time.

She knew why.

One winter, he returned after nearly seven years.

She almost didn't feel him coming.

The hum was faint, fragile, weak, like a memory struggling to stay alive.

He studied her eyes a long time.

"Your'e quieter," he said.

"So are you".

He played with wild urgency that night.

Not his guitar, his heart.

Trembling, hungry, sad,

The candle bent thin in the vibrating air.

Her soul hollowed.

Something was unravelling.

He knew it.

She knew it.

But the ritual demanded completion.

So he played.

And she listened.

It ended with an announcement.

One ordinary dusk.

She prepared as always.

Dress slipping softly from shoulders.

Hair brushed smooth.

Hoop earrings catching the dying light.

Window open.

Candle lit.

She waited.

The sky darkened.

Silence stretched.

No hum.

No presence.

No return.

She waited until dawn.

He did not come.

Days passed.

Weeks.

Months.

Years.

The ritual dissolved slowly, like a sky without clouds, a meadow minus its flowers.

Her poetry stopped arriving altogether.

The chair gathered dust.

The west window remained closed.

Inside her soul-

Nothing called.

Nothing echoed.

Nothing waited to be played.

Nevermore.

Sometimes, late at night, she thought she heard a motorcycle, far away on an endless highway.

Sometimes she thought she heard a voice in the wind-deep-smooth-silk-singing something that almost sounded like the rhythm her soul once kept for him.

But he never returned.

Perhaps he found a brighter star.

Perhaps he gathered enough applause to sustain whatever he truly was.

Or perhaps...

The ritual reached its natural end.

Thought and voice had met.

Poetry and sound intertwined.

It should have been enough.

And for a long time-

It was.

Until it wasn't.

Love wasn't enough.

She had lost something.

Her poetry.

Her heart.

She grabbed her jacket.

Helmet secured, hair blowing loosely over her shoulder, gold hoop earrings left in the box.

The engine roared beneath her, a heartbeat in sync with the rythim of her own soul.

She rode.

Past the window. Past the chair that had held him. Past the candle that had extinguished itself.

Highways and hidden byways cradling her soul.

Poetry in motion.

~mpowerusleeza~