Secrets We Hide

By Peter Bowden


She always cried when she heard the violin, even if it came soft and thin through a neighbor’s open window or floated down the aisle of a small church on a Sunday afternoon. The sound did not simply touch her, it opened something quiet and hidden, like a door long forgotten behind a wall of ordinary days. Her eyes would sting, her breath would tremble, and she never tried to stop it, because she knew the tears were older than the moment itself.

There was a secret tied to that music, though she rarely spoke of it, not even to herself. Once, when she was small, someone had played a lullaby on a violin beneath a pale porch light, a melody meant only for her and the night that wrapped around them like velvet. The air had been warm and forgiving, the world gentle in that rare way it sometimes chooses to be. Since then, every note carried the echo of that night, like a ghost of tenderness preserved in sound.

So when the bow touched the strings and the first note rose trembling into the air, she felt the past breathe against her cheek. Not sorrow, exactly, more a remembering, a soft ache wrapped in beauty. And she let the tears fall, the way rain falls on dry earth, knowing that some secrets are not meant to be spoken, only felt, again and again, whenever the violin dares to sing.


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