Throughout the whole flight, Emily kept thinking about Ezra. She kept thinking about the feeling that had inspired the beginning of a song, the one she was writing, the one that was her own. She gave herself over to it, and let it grow and change. As the plane traveled farther from New York, the melody and lyrics kept evolving. She wished she had a keyboard so she could really hear it and start arranging it as she wrote. But even without a keyboard, by the end of the flight she had something.
He has love in his heart
For everyone but me
He floats on a river of compassion
While I swim in the sea.
When I reach for him
He just doesn’t see
Because there’s love in his heart
For everyone but me
And you say he’s kind
And you say he’s good
And I know it’s true
For you, for you
It wasn’t a whole song. It wasn’t even a good one. But it had a verse and a chorus. Or maybe a chorus and a bridge. She needed to work on it. But channeling her emotions into a song . . . it made everything feel like somehow it would be okay. She was transforming her pain into something else. And in doing so, she was transforming herself.
Plus, focusing on that meant she could ignore the feeling that her life was coming undone. Things were falling apart. The center was shifting off course. And she wasn’t doing anything to pull it back. At least not yet.
She might even be pushing it further afield.