You tune my heart like a well-loved guitar.
Plant seeds of joy where sore bruises are.
You strum through my storms,
I heal through your chords.
Now everything blooms to the sound of our song,
The melody’s ours, and it’s where we belong.
The movement that started with the Stitch Sisters ripples out into the crowd. Someone swipes away a tear. A little boy leans into his dad’s side. No one speaks. They don’t dance. They just lean. Rock gently. Listen with their hearts. Feel it in their bodies.
Now we both talk to flowers, our hands in the dirt,
Sowing something soft where there used to be hurt.
Maisie lets out a laugh, as though she wasn’t expecting me to keep that line.
You love all my brightness, my outbursts, my all.
Never once asked me to shrink or be small.
She presses her fingersto her lips.
You don’t have to sparkle. You already shine.
And I’ll always choose you, even one thousand times.
I play the chorus again and then a little outro. The last note sits soft and even, nothing flashy, simply true to myself. I let the final chord echo into the night. Then the quiet swells, deep and full, as if no one wants to break what just happened.
The only sound is the faint breeze jingling the leaves and evening insects coming out to play.
The stillness deepens.
Then, Dr. Brooks steps up beside me, slipping easily into the M.C. role with his usual calm, as if hosting the town’s biggest night is only a casual favor for an old friend.
He looks out at the crowd, then over to me.
“Yes, it was him all along,” he says. “The quiet one with callused fingers and a songbook no one knew he’d been writing. He’s the musician behind that famous song all you young ones know and a few others you might’ve heard if you follow the band Northern Chord’s playlists online…”
He stretches out the syllables of my name, announcing it loudly. “Beau Callahan. Turns out, we had him right here all along.”
A murmur moves through the crowd. Not quite surprise; it’s less dramatic than that. The real shock happened after Maisie dared me to sing. No. This is approval, affirmation, town pride.
I lower my head, give the smallest nod I can manage. My throat’s too choked to say anything yet, but I meet Dr. Brooks’ eyes, and I think he knows what that nod means.Thank you. For honoring my past. For handling my story with grace and respect.
“Here in Sweetpines,” Doc continues, “we don’t measure a man by what he kept quiet. We measure him by how he steps back into the light.”
He lays a hand on my shoulder. “Sweetpines knows how to protect its own. Your secret’s safe with us, Beau. But your music? We hope you keep sharing that with us, and maybe even with the world one day.”
He steps back.
Before I have a chance to compose myself to say thank you to the crowd, Maisie bursts up the stairs, hair bouncing, smile like a supernova.
She throws her arms around me and kisses me right there, on the stage under the spotlight, in front of everyone.
The crowd erupts.
