What Lies Beneath

There are days when the noise arrives before the light.

It presses against the ribs, rattles the breath, hums too loud to ignore.

Today was one of those days—the kind where memory feels like weather, rolling in without asking, where longing has a sound, and it sounds like a guitar string pulled too tight.

I’ve learned this: life is not a straight line.

It is a lake at dawn—still until it isn’t.

It is fog on a pier, waiting for a sunrise that may come quietly or all at once.

It is harmony and hurt learning to share the same air.

I have loved.

I have lost.

I have loved again.

More times than I can keep track of, more deeply than I ever planned.

Each time I told myself it would be the last—that my heart would finally learn restraint.

It didn’t.

It learned courage instead.

There is a lie we’re taught—that loving and losing means failure, that grief is weakness.

But grief is simply proof of contact.

Proof that something real passed through us and left its imprint.

You don’t survive this life untouched.

You survive it changed.

Sometimes I listen for the guitar in my mind—not just the melody, but the spaces between the notes.

The pauses. The tension.

The way a song can bruise you and heal you in the same breath.

Lyrics that ache. Chords that cradle.

That’s living.

That’s loving.

That’s the work.

Today, I imagined the lakes.

Standing at the edge of the water, needing and not needing at the same time.

Missing someone while also missing myself.

Wanting closeness and craving solitude—both true, both allowed.

There are seasons where we cling.

And seasons where we loosen our grip.

Neither makes us broken.

They make us human.

I’m learning to sit with both—the hurt and the harmony—without asking one to erase the other.

Peace doesn’t require forgetting; it requires honesty.

Letting the noise rise and fall without chasing it.

Letting the fog lift on its own time.

If you are here, reading this, know this:

It is okay to love and lose.

It is okay to ache.

It is okay to need rest from needing.

Life is loss—but it is also rhythm.

And rhythm always returns.

My journey doesn’t feel finished.

It feels newly begun.

A quiet reset.

A breath before the next chord.

I’m learning to love myself not after the pain, but inside it—

to listen closely, to stay, to trust that even on the loud days,

the sunrise is still working its way toward the water.

A Closing Benediction

So let it be known—

our faults were never meant to be denied,

only carried or buried, named or left to rest beneath the floorboards of memory.

We do not escape them; we decide how deeply they root.

It is where the string meets the sound

that the heart first meets the wound—

where vibration becomes meaning,

where ache learns language.

Missing, when unattended, becomes need.

Belonging, when overheld, becomes solitude.

These are not contradictions—

they are twins stitched together by time.

Learn, then, to distrust not what stands bravely in the center of the stage,

but to listen for what nestles quietly in the back—

the subtle harmony, the low hum that holds the song together

when the lead falls silent.

For it is never the spectacle that carries the show,

but the unseen hands that know when to dim the lights,

when to close the curtains,

when to let applause dissolve into stillness

so a chapter may end

and another may begin without apology.

Wither not my heart—

wither only the burdens that have made it weary.

Carry not the ache forward,

but the lessons hidden in the lyrics,

the grace earned by staying through the final note.

And when the music fades,

may what remains be softer, truer,

and wholly your own.

From the Guitar

I was never meant to speak—

only to listen.

I was built from wood that once stood rooted,

learning wind before it learned silence.

I remember weather. I remember pressure.

That is why I understand your hands when they tremble.

You come to me when words fail,

when longing grows teeth,

when memory pulls too hard on the ribcage.

You don’t ask me to fix you—

only to hold the sound while you survive it.

I do not judge how you play.

Too soft. Too sharp.

Too much pause between chords.

Ache has its own tempo.

Where your fingers press, I feel the story before the note.

Where the string meets the sound,

your heart meets the wound—

and I do not flinch.

I’ve watched missing turn into need,

and need dissolve into quiet resolve.

I’ve felt belonging loosen its grip

until solitude finally learned how to breathe.

You think you come to me for music.

What you bring is weight.

What I give back is permission.

I hold the notes you’re afraid to finish.

I keep the lyrics you never say aloud.

I let the dissonance stay

until it learns what harmony costs.

The center of the song is never the loudest part.

It’s the hum beneath the melody—

the steady companion no one applauds

but everyone needs.

I am there when the lights dim,

when the curtains close,

when applause fades into memory

and the room exhales.

I don’t follow you into the next chapter.

I stay behind—keeping the echo intact

so you can walk forward lighter.

Do not carry the ache, I whisper through wood and wire.

Carry what the ache taught you.

Leave the rest here, pressed gently into grain and string.

I was never meant to save you—

only to remind you:

even the quietest hands

can make something true.

Ella Dahl