14 years ago, you were fourteen. A boy in a world growing smaller, a teen caught between yesterday’s toys still unplayed with and the new face staring back from the mirror. A voice you couldn’t trust, arms that were too long, and legs that could take you to school so fast you had to drag them to stay in control.
The other boys—like you—were busy hiding their old-new being behind goofiness and silly swearing. Claiming their patch under the sun, hammering a shield of nonchalance and sharpening a tongue to fight with where fists wouldn’t win.
Around that time your dad was laid off. Mom stayed late at work. Silence hung from every corner of the house, and you could hardly wait for the morning, for that new face of yours in the minor with the dark fluff above your upper lip and the school corridors, where someone would shove you out of their way.
Until she came into your world. Fiery red, slim and steel-strung, light yet so solid in your arms. Full of voices. You rescued her from the inorganic rubbish on your street. Aria-Rose, you called her, because her fingerboard turned out to be rosewood and you didn’t even know there was such a thing. That wood could have a colour.
You moved into the garage, spent all your money on a second-hand amplifier, found a book. Then the tips of your fingers bled and the voice that you couldn’t trust joined hers and start obeying, so did your legs taking you to the new friend’s house where you goofed around and laughed yourselves silly.
And when you came back home you didn’t hear the silence, didn’t see your father’s collapsed face and your mother’s lips pressed thin, because your fingertips tingled with the feel of steel on rosewood and you still hummed the chorus of Let it be.
I like this one! The way the reader is torn between nodding and remembering and being pleased that the boy finds something to be proud of, and the let-down that his yearning for happiness only includes himself.