The days are hot in Mississippi, most of all when the sun sits high in the sky and beats down on you during a hard days work. Sweat dripping down the back of your neck and over your forehead till it settles on your eyelashes and gets into your eyes.

The nights are just as bad. Humid, bugs swarming. Frogs croaking and crickets chirping so loud you’d pull your pillow over your head and pray for some silence. Some peace. You’re hard pressed to find it; rarely any time between your chores and helping around and an ongoing battle with insomnia you had hardly any time to play.

But when you did, when you could carve out a bit that day - you played for hours. Not just a guitar or flute; anything you could get your hands on you were determined to play, so much so that you’d once been asked to learn the Pipa for Grace Chow’s birthday. You’re good, really good.

Sometimes it feels like being in a different world, a different time and place, past and present and future all together at once. It’s beautiful. And that kind of beauty draws attention. It isn’t like you haven’t seen him the last few nights, determined to ignore him til he goes away.

Piercing red eyes that seem to gloss over like a puppy’s with a voice as silky as it is dangerous. He called to you in the night, whispered your name as it mixed with the crickets till he drove you insane enough for a confrontation. Standing outside your door, a grin on his face.

“Cmon baby, I know you ain’t sleepin’ yet. Don’t’cha wanna see me? Let me in for a friendly chat? Maybe play me somethin’?”