Page 80 of Second Verse

Norah shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

Poppy looked at Norah, making her feel see-through. Norah's eyes darted away, her fingers nervously tapping on the glass in her hand. The air between them felt charged.

‘I'm sorry,’ Norah finally blurted out, her voice slightly shaky. ‘I shouldn’t have brought it up.’

Poppy swallowed, her fingers absently playing with the rim of her glass. ‘The song or...’

‘The song, yeah. The song,’ Norah said quickly.

‘I don’t think that’s what you meant,’ Poppy said.

Norah found the will to look Poppy in the eye. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘OK, but you should know... That song was for you. And it wasreal,’ Poppy said.

Norah said something then that she later attributed to a mini-stroke. There was no other explanation. ‘Would you play it for me? The original?’

She was sure that Poppy was gonna say no. But Poppy picked up the guitar. ‘I think I can probably remember how toplay it. But I can’t look at you while I do it,’ she said, closing her eyes.

Poppy's fingers began to dance across the strings of her old acoustic guitar, picking out a familiar tune. Across from her on the couch, Norah reclined, a half-empty glass of wine cradled in her hand.

‘She finds solace in the stroke of a pen,’Poppy sang quietly.

Her voice was different than it had been in her pop years. It was worn smoother from use, its sound richer from a life lived. Norah was entranced as she continued.

‘In the colours that bleed, she finds a friend.

Through the sadness that clouds her gaze,

Her drawings weave through the darkest maze.’

The song was like a time machine, transporting Norah across the years, back to the nights they used to spend together as teens.

‘In the silence of her room, where shadows play,

Norah's drawings come alive in their own way.

With tears like ink, she paints the night,

Sketching her sorrows in the fading light.’

Poppy strummed a little bridge, her eyes still squeezed shut. She looked a little scared, Norah thought.

‘In shadows cast by flickering light,

I watch you draw, lost in the night.

Each line you trace, my heart does ache,

For love I hide, for your sweet sake.’

Norah drank Poppy in as she sang. The way her hair fell loose around her face, the concentration furrowing her brow, thegentle sway of her body as she lost herself in the music—it was all so intoxicating.

‘In the gallery of her mind, where dreams reside,

Norah's sketches bloom, where emotions collide.

In shades of hope and shades of despair,

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