一页纸爱的故事——为你而歌

早春四月，每个傍晚的日光在一点点延长。树叶被夕阳镀上了一层金，凉爽的春风一吹，如粼粼闪动的亮片一般跳动。盘腿而坐，艾玛拿起她的吉他，随意拨动了几个音符，测试着吉他的音准。拨开挡在前额的发丝，她开始歌唱。

放学后她叫我去她家。我们一起走向她父亲农场的最远方，在河边找了个地方，她铺开旧床单。隐约传来“哗哗”的水声，在林子的缝隙里能看到被河分成两半的田野，但河水和堤岸却被灌木丛挡了个严严实实。我们聊了会儿学校的事，她说她盼着毕业，然后去她阿姨家过暑假。

她从草丛里拿起吉他。

“你要弹首歌么？”我问道。

她望向远方，开始歌唱。她空灵却热情的声音在发光的田野上飘荡开来，如气球一般轻快地向天空中升去。微风将她的声音吹向远方，落在一个遥远的地方，一个随着岁月流逝越来越遥不可及的地方。

我们在那儿一直待到天黑。我坐在那最后几缕夕阳中，聆听。那是一种超越灿烂的光明，太阳竭力地把它最后的美好倾洒在我们脸上，把火热的光线散落在田野和树林上，仿佛只有这样，夜才无法觊觎它的权威，它在白天所散布的无尽光明才不会付诸流水。

我们毕业后就断了联系，我实在想不通，她在那年秋天自杀了。我一直到后来才知道，她那天的歌是为我而唱。她姐姐在艾玛的一本日记中找到了那首歌的歌词。她把日记给了我，本子微微泛黄，如同历史的遗物一般。我捧着它，大声地读着那些歌词。她一手漂亮的笔迹，我再熟悉不过，但那些歌词对我来说却是空洞的，虽然它们就工工整整地写在那儿。少了她的歌声，那些歌词被时间加密，为岁月磨蚀，被她的死带走了全部意义。我再也无法读懂它们了。

One Page Love Story - A Song For You

by Adam Stanley

It was early April, and the hours of light had just begun to stretch out a little longer each evening, where it lay on the tips of the leaves, and they shimmered in the brisk, cool wind like sequins. Sitting cross-legged, Emma picked up her guitar, and strummed a few chords to see if it was in tune. She brushed her hair from her face, and began to sing.

She had called me after school and asked me to come over. When I got there, we walked out towards the farthest pasture on the edge of her father’s property, until we found a place near the river, and she spread out the old quilt. You could hear the water, and see the space in the trees where the river separated the fields, but the riverbank was hidden by the undergrowth, and the river itself was invisible. We talked for a while about the school and how much she was looking forward to graduation and then she was going to spend the summer at her aunt’s house.

She picked her guitar up from the grass.

“So,” I asked, “are you going to play me a song?”

She looked away and began to sing. As she sang, her quite, yet passionate voice rose above the glowing fields, and then ascending further into the sky, as if it was some buoyant thing like a balloon, it was blown by the wind until it disappeared into the distance, settling in a place that seemed very far away. A place that seems to be moving even further away, with every new spring that passes.

We stayed out there ‘til it was almost dark. I sat there, listening, in that last few minutes golden light. It was a light that beyond brilliant, as if in desperation the sun had quickly showered all of its beauty on our faces, scattering its last fiery rays across the fields and trees, so that night could not steal any of its majesty; so that none of its brilliance would be wasted.

We lost touch after graduation, and for a reason I have never understood, she killed herself that fall. I didn’t find out until later, that the song she sang that day was about me. Her sister had found the lyrics in one of Emma’s diaries. She handed it to me and I held the yellowing notebook in my hand like a relic, and I read the words out loud. Though they were legible, printed neatly in that almost calligraphic script that I remember well, without her voice they made no sense, as if the words had been encrypted by time, the meaning irreversibly blurred by the years in between, and when she killed herself, she took the meaning with her, and I would never understand them.