36

I purposely put the song on repeat. The last song on the album. It is a piano piece, and it’s dissonance and out-of-tune notes reverberate like a pathetic kind of wailing. It reminds me of a dying clock. I can hear the strings of the instrument shudder in agony as the mallets fall like the hand of God upon a dying man. They each have their own song to sing, and together their songs make track thirty-six, the saddest song on the album. Every chord is deliberate, almost forced. I can almost hear the creaking of the legs, the breathing of the player, the rainfall inside of his head. It sounds distant, dissipating yet rising. The highest notes barely reach their mark, and the lowest notes struggle to bellow out their gruff mumbling. This song, it reminds me of the color gray. It reminds me of the wind on an overcast day. I play it again and again because it keeps me in one place. It keeps me in that one corner of my swelled brain, the part that makes everything seem pointless. I slowly fall into a bed of white flowers. The grass is dark green; the sky cloudy. I fall backwards into the cool bed. This song resonates throughout the sky and the Earth. It becomes the wind; becomes the trees and the clouds. It becomes everything around me, and everything within me. It lifts my head up with both hands and kisses me on the cheek. As its lips drag down onto my neck the water begins to fall. As the last measures crawl out of the damp earth and overtake me, I lay helpless. I stare up, drops fall into my eyes. Nothing matters. The strenuous labor of the strings keeps on, the keys keep pressing. I am alone. This song, I have never heard it with company.