“Six Strings and I are going to travel the world together,” 11-year-old Lyric Lark declared from the backseat of a New York City taxicab, talking about her guitar like it was a living thing.
The cab smelled like winter air and old coffee. The seats squeaked when the driver leaned forward, and the city outside the window looked sharp and busy—people moving as if they had music in their shoes.
The driver glanced at her in the rearview mirror. His baseball cap sat low, and his eyes looked tired in a way Lyric recognized from adults who never got enough sleep.
“Okay, kid, whatever you say,” he muttered. “Just grab your guitar from the trunk and get going. I have a job to do. I don’t have time to listen to your dreams. It’s costing me too much on fumes!”
Lyric’s face warmed, but she didn’t look away.
“It’s not a dream,” she said. “It’s a plan.”
She had named the guitar SIX STRINGS the week she got him, because something about him felt different from the battered school instruments lined up in the classroom closet. Six Strings had a warm, woody hum when she played, like he was answering her back. Sometimes, when she practiced alone, she could almost believe the guitar was listening.
The taxi stopped outside the tall brick building with gold lettering: BROOKLYN MUSIC SCHOOL. Horns blared. Engines coughed. The city sounded impatient.
Lyric pushed the door open and stood with one foot on the sidewalk.
“Next time you see me,” she told the driver, “I’ll be playing at Carnegie Hall.”
The driver huffed a laugh. “Sure, kid.”
Lyric handed him a wad of cash her mom had given her for cab service to her guitar lessons, because her mom always said you paid people like their work mattered. Then Lyric slammed the door shut and hurried around to the trunk.
“Could I get some help with this?” she called, raising her voice over the roar of the street.
She reached for the trunk latch.
The taxi’s blinker clicked.
The engine growled.
And before Lyric’s fingers could even find the handle, the taxicab lurched forward and sped down the street.
Lyric froze, as if her brain had to catch up to her eyes. Then she ran.
“Wait a minute! Six Strings! I need Six Strings!” she screamed. “Where are you going? Stop!”
Tears streamed down her face as she sprinted after the cab. “Stop! You’re a thief!”
The taxi disappeared around a corner. The city swallowed it whole.
Lyric stood panting on the sidewalk, her throat burning, her chest tight as if a string inside her had snapped.
“Six Strings,” she whispered. “What am I going to do now? Mom will be upset. I need him for my lesson.”
“Lyric?” Miss Medley Stanza’s voice floated toward her through the noise.
Miss Stanza hurried up the street with a stack of papers in one hand and bags over her shoulders, her hair pinned up like she was too busy for it to misbehave. She always moved like she had a metronome inside her. “Why are you crying?” she asked.
“He drove away,” Lyric choked. “With my guitar.”
A classmate appeared beside them, the boy with the two cases and the tapping fingers. Jazzy Beat. “You can have one of mine,” he blurted. “I have two!”
Lyric hugged him quickly, because she didn’t know what else to do with the panic.
“Thanks, Jazzy Beat,” she said. Her voice shook. “Maybe somebody needed Six Strings more than I did today.”
Miss Stanza’s smile was calm in a way that made Lyric feel even stranger.
“Everything already worked out,” Miss Stanza said, as if she were reading from sheet music. “Just according to plan.”
“What plan?” Lyric whispered, but Miss Stanza was already ushering them inside.
“Guitar class in five minutes,” Miss Stanza called over her shoulder. “Don’t be late!”
Upstairs, Lyric sat in the front row with Jazzy’s spare guitar on her knee. The instrument was fine. It was even pretty. But it felt stiff in her hands, like it didn’t know her.
“Now, turn to page twelve of your lesson book,” Miss Stanza said. “Today we are working on the C major scale.”
Lyric turned to page twelve. The notes blurred. She pressed her fingers down and tried to play, but the sound wasn’t right. It didn’t hum. It didn’t answer her back.
During class, Lyric leaned toward Jazzy and whispered, “After class, I’m looking for Six Strings.”
Jazzy’s eyebrows lifted. “That’ll be like finding a needle in a haystack,” he said. “Keep my second guitar until you get a new one.”
“I don’t want a new guitar,” Lyric whispered. She stared out the window at the taxis moving below like bright yellow fish. “I get a special feeling when I play Six Strings.”
Jazzy didn’t tease her. He only nodded, as if he understood more than he was saying.
That night, Lyric lay awake staring at the ceiling. She imagined Six Strings in the dark trunk of the taxi, bumping down the street alone. She imagined him frightened, which was silly because guitars didn’t have feelings.
Still, she couldn’t shake the sensation that he wasn’t lost.
He was… traveling to the person who needed his song the most.
Lyric remembered something Miss Stanza had told the class once, while tuning a guitar with careful hands. She’d mentioned a legendary guitarist named Reed Rock—how he’d loved his instrument so much that, on his deathbed, he’d whispered a prayer asking God to let his music live on through its six strings and bless everyone who touched it.
Lyric had liked that story, even if she didn’t know whether it was true. She liked the idea that music could be passed from hand to hand like a lantern in the dark.
“If you’re really special,” she whispered into her pillow, talking to a guitar that wasn’t there, “then find your way back to me.”
The next afternoon, Lyric stayed after school, watching the street until her eyes ached. Taxis came and went. None of them stopped. None of them opened their trunks.
She was about to give up when she spotted the same cab idling along the curb, the driver leaning out his window as if arguing with someone who wasn’t there. Lyric’s heart kicked hard.
She hurried closer, keeping to the edge of the sidewalk. The driver popped the trunk, ran to the back of his cab, and frowned into it.
For one shining second, Lyric saw the beige case and the tag with her own name: SIX STRINGS — LYRIC LARK.
“How did you end up in here?” the driver muttered. “That crazy kid who wanted to play at Carnegie Hall forgot her guitar.”
Lyric opened her mouth to shout, That’s me!
“Oh well,” he said. “I’m never gonna see her again anyhow.”
He grabbed the case and tossed it toward the trash bin on the curb as if it were nothing. Then he shut the trunk, slid back into the driver’s seat, and pulled away.
“No!” Lyric cried, sprinting forward.
She reached the bin—and stopped.
A homeless man dressed in rags was already there, bending slowly, as careful as someone handling glass. He lifted the case and opened it on the sidewalk.
“Six Strings,” the man whispered, reading the name across the guitar as if it mattered. “I wonder who owns you.”
Lyric took a step forward. Her hand lifted.
Then the man’s fingers moved over the tuning pegs—quick and practiced—and he strummed. The note that rang out was so clean it made Lyric’s skin prickle.
He began to play flawless jazz standards, melodies tumbling out like water from a fountain. Someone nearby murmured, “Rhapsody in Blue,” and another person stopped short as if they’d run into an invisible wall of sound.
A crowd gathered. Bills fluttered down. Coins clinked into the open case.
Lyric hovered at the edge, hidden behind a street sign, watching the man’s face. His eyes were closed, but his expression wasn’t peaceful. It was hungry—like someone drinking water after being lost.
When he finished, a few people clapped.
The man looked down at the money as if he couldn’t believe it. He put it in his pocket. Then, he placed the guitar back into its case.
“Wow,” he said softly. “Wasn’t that great?”
Lyric’s chest squeezed. That was her guitar. Her dream.
But the man’s shoulders straightened as if the music had put bones back into him.
“Maybe,” he murmured, mostly to himself, “maybe they’ll remember the name Banjo Brio.”
Lyric blinked. Banjo Brio. She’d heard that name before—on a faded poster in the school hallway, near the bulletin board that advertised concerts. Former New York Philharmonic guitarist.
She didn’t know his whole story, but she could see pieces of it: the way he cradled the guitar like a lifeline, the way his hands remembered something his life had tried to forget.
Lyric stepped forward, ready to say, “That’s mine.”
Banjo opened his eyes and looked out at the crowd as if seeing people again for the first time. “Maybe I can get my old job back,” he whispered. “The orchestra might remember.”
Lyric’s fingers curled into her palms.
A sanitation truck rumbled up to the curb with a crash of metal and a shout from a worker. The crowd shifted. People scattered to make room. Lyric flinched as a trash collector reached for the case near the bin, moving fast, doing his job.
“Wait!” Lyric yelled, but the word disappeared into engine noise.
Banjo lurched forward. “Don’t throw that old guitar out!” he shouted. “Do you hear me? There’s something special about him!”
Loads of trash were piled high on the back of the truck, and for an awful second Lyric imagined Six Strings crushed under everything—dreams, leftovers, broken furniture, the whole city’s forgetting.
“Make sure that guitar finds a good home!” Banjo called, voice cracking. “It doesn’t belong on a trash heap somewhere!”
The truck driver leaned out his window.
“Hey man,” he called, and he sounded like someone who used to be loud on purpose. “I’m Mac Brown. Former rock star!”
He held up his arm, and even from the sidewalk Lyric saw the tattoo of a guitar on his bicep.
“I hate this job,” he said, “but it’s a steady gig. Maybe I should get the band back together. Long live Rocks That Roll!”
Then—like it mattered—Mac lifted the case away from the trash and set it carefully on the front seat beside him.
Lyric exhaled so hard her chest hurt.
The truck rumbled away. Banjo stood on the sidewalk staring after it, his face pale.
Lyric stepped toward him, finally brave enough to be seen.
“Sir,” she said softly, “that guitar… it’s—”
Banjo blinked at her, then looked down at her small hands and her school bag.
“Yours?” he guessed, and the word didn’t sound accusing. It sounded gentle.
Lyric nodded, throat tight.
Banjo swallowed. “He found me when I needed him,” he said quietly. “Just for a minute.” His gaze drifted down the street where the truck had gone. “Don’t let him get crushed."
Lyric didn’t answer, because she couldn’t promise what she didn’t control. Instead, she said, “Where did they take him?”
Banjo pointed. “Hospital. Brooklyn Hospital Center. Donation office,” he said.
Lyric ran as fast as she could down the street.
By the time she reached Brooklyn Hospital Center, her lungs felt like crumpled paper. She pushed through the glass doors and followed the signs to Donations, her sneakers squeaking on the shiny floor.
Inside the donation office, Mac Brown stood at the counter with the case in his hands, talking fast like he was trying to convince himself of something.
“I’m not the best owner for you,” Mac said, with a laugh glancing down at Six Strings. “I really need an electric for my band.”
Behind the counter was a tall man with silver hair and kind eyes. His name tag read ALTO CELLO.
“Oh, thank you!” Alto Cello said. “We could really use a new guitar for the cancer ward.”
Lyric’s stomach dipped at the words cancer ward.
Alto opened the case and inspected Six Strings with careful hands, as if he respected what an instrument could carry.
“I’ll tune it up,” he said, “and put a new set of strings on it for the patients.”
Mac watched, and for a second his tough voice softened.
“You know,” he said, tapping the guitar tattoo on his arm, “I used to play to rooms full of people. Now I pick up everybody’s trash. Funny how life does that.”
Alto smiled. “Maybe it’s not the end of the song,” he said.
Lyric held still near the doorway, afraid if she spoke too soon the whole moment would break apart.
Alto restrung Six Strings with fresh silver strings, tightening each one like he was tuning a promise. When he strummed, the note rang brighter than Lyric remembered—clear as a bell.
Lyric felt it in her fingertips even from across the room.
Alto placed Six Strings on a cart and pushed it toward the elevator. Lyric followed at a distance, heart thumping, the air smelling like soap and lemon cleaner.
At the end of a long hallway, a nurse met them. “You brought the guitar?” she asked.
“Room twelve,” Alto said. “She asked for music.”
Lyric stood in the doorway as the nurse carried Six Strings into an elderly woman’s room. Tubes and wires curved carefully around the bed like vines.
The woman’s eyes brightened as if someone had opened a window.
“A guitar,” she whispered.
“Now, Arietta Liron,” the nurse said kindly, “you can play as long as it doesn’t bother the other patients. Just don’t get tangled up in the wires.”
Arietta’s hands trembled as she took Six Strings, but the way she held him told Lyric she wasn’t new to music. Arietta strummed once, then began to sing.
“Amazing Grace,” Lyric mouthed without realizing what she did.
Other patients gathered at the doorway. A nurse paused in the hall. Someone joined softly on the second line, then another, until the song became a round—imperfect, human, and strangely beautiful.
Lyric’s eyes stung. She didn’t feel jealous. She felt… honored, like she was standing at the edge of something important.
When the final note faded, Arietta smiled and rested her head back.
“I just needed to sing that one last time,” she whispered.
Lyric watched the monitors beep steadily. The room went quiet, as if everyone was listening to the echo.
A long beep sounded. The nurse moved fast but gentle, speaking in a low voice to another nurse. Someone gasped softly.
Lyric didn’t understand every detail, but she understood the meaning: the song was finished.
Alto returned and lifted Six Strings from Arietta’s lap with careful reverence, placing him back in the case.
In the hallway, Alto exhaled and looked down at the handle.
“I think you might do better at a school,” he murmured, almost as if he were speaking to the guitar itself.
Then he paused. “Oh,” he said, noticing the tag. “What’s this? A name tag.”
Lyric’s pulse jumped.
Alto read it aloud. “Lyric Lark.”
Lyric stepped forward before fear could stop her.
“That’s me,” she said. Her voice shook, but she kept it steady. “I’m Lyric Lark.”
Alto studied her. “How can I be sure?” he asked.
Lyric’s mouth fell open. “I’m definitely me, but I’m not old enough to drive or own a credit card, and my mom’s not here!” she said.
Alto’s eyebrows lifted, and for a second Lyric worried he really might keep Six Strings.
“I can explain,” Lyric blurted. “I let him slip down the street in that stupid old taxicab before guitar lessons.”
Alto’s expression softened. “Then let’s take him back where he belongs,” he said.
After work, Alto walked with Lyric through the evening air toward Brooklyn Music School. The city lights flickered on one by one, like stars deciding to show up. Lyric closely watched Alto carry the case down the street. She wanted her guitar back.
At the school doors, Jazzy Beat came bounding down the stairs with his guitar. “Lyric!” he called. “I practiced more than I should have this week and memorized the C major and minor scales!”
Then he saw the case. “No way,” he breathed.
“I knew I wasn’t supposed to get a new guitar,” she said to Jazzy.
Miss Medley Stanza appeared at the top of the stairs as if she’d been waiting in the wings. She came down and shook Alto’s hand.
“So glad you found your guitar, Lyric,” she said warmly. “We all love Six Strings.”
Alto looked from Miss Stanza to Lyric.
“Everyone seems to think you really are Lyric,” he said slowly. “I suppose the guitar probably is yours.”
Lyric’s fear flared into anger—not because she hated Alto, but because she had been helpless too many times in the past two days.
“You’re trying to keep Six Strings for yourself!” she snapped. “Give me my guitar back, or I’m calling the cops.”
Alto blinked, then sighed. “Fine,” he said, handing the case over. “Don’t lose him again, or I’ll think you’re lying.”
Miss Stanza’s smile returned like sunshine. “Have a wonderful evening, sir,” she said, guiding Alto toward the door. “Goodbye!”
When the door closed, Lyric opened the case right there on the stairwell. She ran her fingers across the new strings—silver, tight, shining.
“I’m not gonna let you out of my sight,” Lyric whispered automatically. Then she stopped, because the words didn’t fit anymore—not after Banjo’s face, not after Mac’s laugh, not after Arietta’s final song.
Jazzy leaned in, eyes wide. “Where was he?” he whispered.
Lyric swallowed. “Everywhere,” she said.
She closed the case gently, holding it like you hold something that matters.
“I still have to play at Carnegie Hall,” she whispered to Six Strings.
“Every now and then,” she said quietly, “I might have to share you with people.”
She rested her hand on the lid and felt the hum again—faint, steady, real enough to make her believe in Reed Rock’s prayer without needing proof.
“If someone needs you,” Lyric whispered, “help me notice.”
The hum answered her in the quiet.
And in the quiet stairwell of Brooklyn Music School, Lyric didn’t feel like she held something that she owned. She felt like she was holding something that traveled.
Copyright 2020 Jennifer Waters
Pen Jen's Inkwell Podcast version:
“Six Strings and me are going to travel the world together,” said 11-year-old Lyric Lark from a taxicab backseat.
“Okay, kid, whatever you say,” the taxicab driver said. “Just grab your guitar from the trunk and get going. I have a job to do. I don’t have time to listen to your dreams. It’s costing me too much on fumes!”
Six Strings sat in the trunk of the taxicab ready for whoever would play him next. His current caretaker, New York City’s Lyric Lark, a novice guitar student, needed him to help her set goals. Now that Six Strings had pointed her in the right direction, it was time for the traveling guitar to take some trips.
Over the years, he had been held by all kinds of people—young and old, rich and poor, weak and strong. Mostly, people met Six Strings at a pivotal moment in their lives, when they needed his comfort or guidance. His original owner was legendary guitarist, Reed Rock, who upon his death prayed for his guitar to live on.
“God, please help my guitar pass into the right hands after I die,” Reed whispered on his death bed.
“Let this guitar bless everyone who touches it, and let my music live on through its six strings,” he said.
Then, the New York City taxicab driver with Lyric inside stopped outside the prestigious Brooklyn Music School.
“Next time you see me I’ll be playing at Carnegie Hall,” Lyric said, slamming the car door shut.
After she handed the driver a wad of cash, she walked to the back of the taxi to get her guitar.
“Could I get some help with this?” Lyric said, over the noise of horns and car engines.
Before Lyric could maneuver the trunk open, the taxicab put on its blinker and sped down the street.
“Wait a minute! Six Strings! I need Six Strings! Where are you going?” Lyric cried. “Stop! You’re a thief!”
As Lyric ran down the street after the taxi, tears streamed down her face, crying.
“Six Strings come back! What am I going to do now?” Lyric said. “I need Six Strings for my guitar lesson. Mom will be upset!”
“Don’t worry, Lyric,” Miss Medley Stanza said, the teacher of the beginner guitar class at the Brooklyn Music School. She walked up the street with a stack of papers in her hands and bags over her shoulders.
“You can have one of my guitars. I have two!” a classmate said, walking down the street with two guitar cases.
“Everything already worked out, just according to plan,” Miss Stanza said, smiling at Lyric, who was teary-eyed.
“Thanks, Jazzy Beat,” Lyric said, giving him a hug. “Maybe somebody needed Six Strings more than I did today.”
“Maybe,” Jazzy said, opening the door to Brooklyn Music School and running up the stairs to the guitar classroom.
“We have guitar class in five minutes. Don’t be late!” Miss Stanza said to her students, bustling into the building.
“After class, I’m looking for Six Strings,” Lyric whispered to Jazzy as they took their seats in the front of the class.
“That’ll be like finding a needle in a haystack,” Jazzy said. “Keep my second guitar until you get a new one.”
“I don’t want a new guitar,” she said, looking out the window. “I get a special feeling when I play Six Strings.”
“Now, turn to page twelve of your lesson book,” Miss Stanza said. “Today we are working on the C major scale.”
In the meantime, Six Strings had bumped down the street in the New York City taxi by himself. By the end of the evening, the driver parked on the roadside and popped the trunk open to find an out-of-tune guitar.
“How did you end up in here?” the driver said, looking at the name tag on Six Strings. “That crazy kid who wanted to play at Carnegie Hall forgot her guitar. Oh well, but I’m never gonna see her again anyhow.”
The taxi driver tossed the guitar case into the trash bin on the street, next to a homeless man dressed in rags. As the driver made his way into his apartment for the night, the homeless man grabbed the case and opened it.
“Six Strings!” he said, reading the name across the front of the beige wooden guitar. “I wonder who owns you?”
He opened up the case on the street, tuned the guitar, and played flawless jazz standards like “Rhapsody in Blue.”
Well past midnight, passersby tossed big and small dollar bills into the guitar case, along with loose change.
“Wow! Wasn’t that great?” the homeless man said, remembering his days as a classical guitarist for the New York Philharmonic. Of course, this was before he started drinking and lost all his family and friends to the bottle.
“Maybe I can get my old job back,” he said to himself, curling up in the cold. “The orchestra might remember the name Banjo Brio. I used to help pack out the theater every night. I can already hear the music.”
When Banjo woke up in the morning, he stood up with new determination to change his life for the better.
“Where’s Six Strings?” he said. “He was here last night.” He looked up to see the trash collector holding Six Strings.
“Don’t throw that old guitar out! Do you hear me? There’s something special about him,” Banjo yelled.
Loads of trash piled high on the back of a large truck, and the guitar was almost squashed with the rest of it.
“Make sure that guitar finds a good home,” Banjo said. “It doesn’t belong on a trash heap somewhere.”
“Hey man, I’m Mac Brown, a former rock star!” the truck driver said, showing Banjo a tattoo of a guitar on his arm.
“I hate this job, but it’s a steady gig. I should get the band back together,” he said. “Long live Rocks That Roll!”
Knowing that Six Strings had done his job in Banjo’s life, he travelled on the front seat of the trash truck to Brooklyn Hospital Center’s donation office. The trash collector left the guitar in the office by lunchtime.
“I’m not the best owner for you,” Mac said, giving Six Strings away. “I really need an electric for my band.”
Meanwhile, Banjo made his way to the New York Philharmonic office in a new set of clothes. The money collected from Banjo’s street performance was enough to get him an outfit for a job interview.
“Oh, thank you! We could really use a new guitar for the cancer ward,” Alto Cello, the manager of the Brooklyn Hospital Center donation office said. “I’ll just tune it up and put a new set of strings on it for the patients.”
After Mr. Cello put on the new strings, Six Strings felt stronger than ever, ready to be played again. With that, Alto put him on a cart and sent the guitar up an elevator and down a long hall of hospital rooms.
When the guitar reached the end of the hall, a nurse picked him up and placed him in an elderly woman’s room.
“A guitar!” the dying woman said, eyeing Six Strings from her bed, where she was attached to tubes and machines.
“I must play you, if it’s the last thing that I do,” she said, considering that she had few days to live.
“You can play the guitar as long as it doesn’t bother the other patients,” the nurse said, opening the instrument.
“Now, Arietta Liron, just don’t get tangled up in the wires,” the nurse said, handing her Six Strings.
As she played and sang, the patients from the ward gathered by her bed, joining in a round of “Amazing Grace.”
“I just needed to sing that one last time,” Arietta said, closing her eyes and resting her head on her pillow.
“I hear the angels singing with us,” she said, drifting off, taking her last breath with a room full of friends.
Six Strings lay quietly on her lap, as a long beep sounded from the monitors next to Arietta’s bed. Gasps filled the room, as Six Strings was put back in his case, making his way back down the hall to Mr. Cello.
“I think you might do better at a school,” Mr. Cello said to Six Strings, tuning him up again.
“Oh, what’s this? A name tag: Lyric Lark,” Alto said. “Maybe Brooklyn Music School will be able to find this young lady. How did you ever end up in my hospital ward with a name tag on? You have an owner!”
After work, Mr. Cello walked down the street with Six Strings to the Brooklyn Music School.
“Six Strings!” Lyric shouted, running in the front door, and grabbing him from Alto Cello. “I knew I wasn’t supposed to get a new guitar,” she said. “How in the world did you get my Six Strings?”
“Oh, honey, the guitar just showed up one day,” Mr. Cello said. “I can’t really explain it.”
“I can explain it,” Lyric said. “I let Six Strings slip down the street in that stupid old taxicab . . .”
“So glad you found your guitar, Lyric,” Miss Stanza said, shaking Mr. Cello’s hand. “We all love Six Strings.”
“How do I know that you are really Lyric Lark?” Mr. Cello said. “Do you have any identification?”
“Identification?” Lyric said. “I’m not old enough to drive, or own a credit card, and my mom’s not here!”
“She’s been Lyric Lark for as long as I’ve known her,” Miss Stanza said, still holding onto Mr. Cello’s hand and shaking it harder than usual. She eyed him with a serious glance, as though he better give Lyric her instrument back.
“Lyric, hurry up, or we’re going to be late for class,” Jazzy said, running up the stairs with his guitar.
“I practiced more than I should have this week and memorized the C major and minor scales,” he called to Lyric.
“Well, everyone seems to think that you really are Lyric,” Mr. Cello said. “I suppose that the guitar probably is yours.”
“You’re trying to keep Six Strings for yourself!” Lyric said. “Give me my guitar back, or I’m calling the cops.”
“Fine,” Mr. Cello said, handing Six Strings to Lyric. “Don’t lose him again, or I’ll think you’re lying.”
“Have a wonderful evening, sir,” Miss Stanza said to Mr. Cello, helping him out the front door. “Goodbye!”
“I’m not gonna let you out of my sight,” Lyric said to Six Strings. “The strings on Jazzy’s guitar keep breaking, and I have to play at Carnegie Hall. Every now and then, I might have to share you with people, but I still need you the most.”
Copyright 2020 Jennifer Waters
https://soundcloud.com/jen-waters/six-strings
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