It’s always caught between somewhere, something always lost between expression and emotion.

The music conjures a time when I was more open, a time when I had more faith. I only want to remember. I don’t want to forget.

‘What will you two do if you have to leave each other?’ Mum asks, careful and tender. ‘If we have to . . . we’ll work it out.’

the doubts my father had now feel justified. I feel tired inside, my spirit worn out by the effort it took to hope and dream, to believe, to imagine myself a future in which I could choose something for me.

I’ve only ever known myself in song, between notes, in that place where language won’t suffice but the drums might, might speak for us, might speak for what is on our hearts.

I’ve been trying to hear my own song again, picking up my trumpet almost every day, sending sounds into the world. She kisses me and the world quietens. This closeness, this brief intimacy, feels final, feels like goodbye.

Bill Withers is playing, ‘Can We Pretend?’

I’m asking her about the gaps where language fails us. I want to know because those stories are the making of me.

We don’t want this thing to end, this freedom, and it doesn’t feel like it will, these moments looping, round and round, until—