Therapy Bits

She says she has the ability to hear the soundtrack of your life.

I laughed at first, the way you laugh at a magician who swears the rabbit was in the hat the whole time. But then she tilted her head, like a radio tuning itself, and said:

“Yours is strings. Soft. Melancholic. But there’s a tremor of brass under it—something waiting.”

I froze. I hadn’t told her about the violin lessons, about the way I never stuck with them but kept the bow tucked in a drawer like a relic. And I certainly hadn’t told her about the gnawing in my chest that something was coming, some change I couldn’t name.

“Most people don’t want to know,” she continued, eyes half-closed as though she were eavesdropping on a concert only she could hear. “They’re afraid their soundtrack will be too plain. Elevator music, jingles. But yours… yours is in motion. It’s building.”

That night I dreamed of orchestras rising from the street, violins clutched in the hands of commuters, cellists bowing on subway platforms. When I woke, the hum of the fridge sounded like an overture.

I went back to her the next day.

“What happens,” I asked, “when the soundtrack ends?”

She smiled, but it wasn’t the kind of smile that comforts.

“It doesn’t end,” she whispered. “It changes key.”

This Week’s Writer’s Workshop Prompts: September 11, 2025 – The Sound of One Hand Typing