Susanna told me once that she loved the sound of crickets. She said it made her feel safe. She talked to the crickets often, offering her voice to the gentle symphony of wings floating above the hum of the night. And when the music rose in crescendo, Susanna swore the crickets were talking back to her.
For weeks, I watched her at that window, peering out upon an orchestra that she couldn’t see. And when the cough attacked her throat, Susanna’s symphony would stop, as if holding its breath in anticipation of the rekindling of her voice. But even when her melody returned, we all knew it was only a matter of time. And when the doctor said the word hospital, Susanna choked against a cacophony of tears, closing her eyes and reaching towards her friends in the darkness as adult arms guided her away.
From that moment forward, the night outside Susanna’s room remained as silent as the darkness, unbroken by the joyous response of cricket wings to their conductor. Peering out from Susanna’s window, her father often wondered what had happened to his little girl’s symphony, and his tears thundered down as he pleaded for the voices that had once kept his daughter strong. But no one answered him. The crickets were gone.
The truth is, we had somewhere more important to be.
Because 500 miles away, a little girl was peering out of her hospital room window. She didn’t have the voice to cry out to us, but we heard her. And one by one, we unleashed our wings to fight the silence, raising our tiny voices in crescendo to produce the symphony inspired by our tiny conductor. She heard us, I knew, and this time, Susanna’s beaming smile was the melody that called us to play louder, longer, stronger. And we did.
For her, we did.
– JJ Nightling