scratchy record

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"I want to be the type of girl that can push someone to write songs about, you know?" she says into her phone piece, twirling her chocolate strands around her finger. "Someone who'll look at me, or listen to me, or see anything compelling in what I do or say that they have to put into music."

Static comes from the voice, perpetuating a scratchy voice. "Why not stories? Why songs?"

"Isn't that what a song is, a story intertwined with music?" she counters. "The only difference is I can dance to it. Sing along. Bask in its rawness."

"What type of song would you like to be?" her best friend asks.

She contemplates the possibilities. "What genre would you think I'd be?"

"Metal. Something about 'killing people over pizza'. I can imagine the girls wearing black lipstick and screaming in their basement as they're jamming."

"Yeah, I'm the type of song psychopaths bathe in the blood of," she says sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "Sounds like the next hit seller. On the FBI's watch list."

The twinkling laughter has a smile fiddling on her face.

"I'd like to be a comfort song, if I had a choice," she tilts her head to the ceiling, eyes unseeing. "When you're having a bad day, or you're getting through some trouble at the moment and need something to make you feel all swirly and conked out. Like a soft buzz. To be a song people want to listen to, hum absentmindedly, cause a good sense of nostalgia."

For she wishes to be embodied in the essence of half notes, of sultry voices, and piano bases. Where fingers will string across G chords and D chords and the world doesn't feel so listless.

"I think I want to be a background song," mulls her best friend. "That music you listen to when you're multi-tasking, writing an essay, or listening to because you know it won't distract you but still fills the silence. Like leaving the lights on in the house when you're alone or the TV in the background when you sleep."

"I just want to be worth writing a song about," she twists her body to lay on her stomach. "One you don't skip on shuffle, that you never get sick of hearing."

She catches her puckered lips in the mirror in front of her. Takes in her reflection; a mussy girl lounging on a single bed, phone in one hand and clumps of hair in another. Something not seen on a magazine cover but maybe one day on an album. That record you case inside a glass cabinet and play with a glass of wine.

"I think," she clears her throat, finding the words, "just being worthy of writing a song about would be great. No matter how bizarre it sounds, how you see yourself as. To know someone saw something in you enough to write about and that's enough."

She hums her name, her story, emphasizing her soul into a melody which life does not harmonize with. "Then that's enough."

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