I have a million thoughts in my head at one moment alone.

 But once a week, in the silence, in the moonlight,  I choose one to contend as a golden thought.

"I'll remember this forever," I tell myself. "I'll never forget. I won't."

And I repeat these words until I do.

But so far only four thoughts have entered my trove of memorial treasures.

Dancing alone in the pouring rain after school one day, singing along with Gene Kelly at the top of my lungs and laughing away every tear I had sobbed under the covers of silence.

The salted wind whipping my hair, and my eyes squinting in the sunlight as the ocean waves rushed by from the view of my car window.

Petrichor in my ears and music on my tongue at that moment as the lights dim and the movie theater falls silent. The moment before my life changes forever. 

But my favorite, my most protected, comes from Daleun. He gave it to me, if only with a look, but it was the best memory I have ever held sacred. 

I own that memory, and I keep it in my pocket wherever the winds take me.

It was a dark parking lot, pitch black and deserted. Not one person was in sight, not one person on all the Earth, only me. The streetlights flickering, and the stars watching from above wondering what I would do.

And in the middle of this silence, this Elysian peace, I sat down and listened. Within the silence, I heard it, in nothing I heard everything.  The silence was the loudest noise I had ever seen.

I can see the music now. 

Perhaps it has always been there, perhaps I had just not noticed it before.

When I woke up from the dream, I had looked for it, searched for the indescribable symphony that had come when I was the only soul left. But even the breathing, the whispers of life broke the music in half.

I have never felt such music since. Not since he left, not since he came. 

This is the story of Daleun.

This is the story of the music.