You Can Sing

In the room where I sleep, there are two pictures on the wall. Both are somewhat small, so the walls appear strikingly blank, but both are wonderful and perhaps help to define me as a person.

The first is a great close-up of a couple kissing, disheveled and carefree. The wavy-haired bearded one is me. The girl I'm kissing sleeps beside me every night. The picture brings back memories. It makes me happy.

The second is a picture ripped from the pages of a magazine. It was an ad for something, but you can't tell that by looking at it. There are no products; it's no glamour shot; there's no familiar sale's pitch. All it is, in the murky shades of a black-and-white that's turning brown, is a man covering his face with a small message that he is holding up to the camera.

'You can sing' the message reads, scrawled out in capital letters, the words sitting on top of one another. 'You can sing,' the message reads and speaks to me, though I can't sing. 'You can sing,' the message sings and what I hear is 'Let me sing.' 'You can sing' and I can dream, and now I know that I can sing.