A sad song.(Kevin Hughes) He turned the lights out. It was dark enough. He put the music on.
It was a sad song. They all were.

Sometimes, he would sit at his computer for hours. The music settling over him, covering all of his emotions with a dampness that matched the streams on his face. He would write something. Something nice, something sweet, something funny. He never hit send. He always had a subject, but he never had an address to send the emails to.

He thought of her. He often did. He hoped she was happy. He had been. The songs that were their songs, were now his alone. Sad songs. Even if they weren’t meant to be. He made it through his days, smiling, kind, patient. He was most most visible of all invisible loves. He was the “nice” in “nice guy” that made you smile, but forget about. He knew it.

He put another album on the record player. Vinyl. It gave him substance. Clicking on a play list didn’t let you stand in the dark, holding an album, sliding it from its sleeve to look at the shiny grooves. That gave you time to consider why you chose that song, that album, that record. You put it on with the same two sided glide that everyone who has ever put a record player uses. Your fingers never touching it at all. Only your palms.

Like your life, it flips easily. Like your life, you have to pick which track to play. Or…let it flow from the beginning. He chose to let it flow. Lifting the needle with the crook of his index finger, he let the diamond hard tip find a starting point. Just like the sharp hardness of loneliness the needle found the right groove. In the valley between ridges is where the music lays.

In the valley of his aloneness is where the music plays.

Sad songs. Songs that move slow enough to let the feelings drip from long molasses memories. A lost love. A past he can’t let go of. So he sits. In the dark. The Sad songs playing on heart strings. He lets the album make a familiar rustling sound at the end. The music is over, but the table still turns, just as his life spins without meaning.

He gets up and moves the needle back to its cradle. He lifts the album with his palms, slides it back into its dust cover. He looks for yet another album. He skips all the blues albums. His pain is an old pain, not the fresh howl of the blues. He didn’t need the raspy drawl of B flat notes to give him the blues, he already had those. He needed the softness of love songs…lost love.

He had to feel her sweater pressed against him. He had to smell her hair, and a hint of her neck. He had to have songs that made him watch her when she didn’t know he was looking. Like when she was reading, or sleeping. He loved the look of concentration that furrowed her brow when she was deep in thought. He loved the wrinkle free contours of her face when she was sleeping.

He needed the willow like brushing of her hair against his cheek when they danced. Sad songs, not Blues, brought back those precious moments…a lyric hits…hard: “Precious and few are the moments I had with you.” Yes. Yes. Yes. Is all his mind could come up with …how true. Another song quotes a diary but the words aren’t about him, he hopes he was as understanding as the man in the song. He is.

He has lost that loving feeling, but listens to an album from fifty years ago, where she is the one who lost it. It makes him feel like crying. So he does.

The music stops. The darkness does not. He stares at shadows that exist only in his memory. He can feel her, but he can’t touch her. He can hold her, but not be held. He talks to her…she smiles. She can’t answer…she isn’t there. Still he talks to her anyway.

A door opens. Someone quietly tip toes to the record player. She lifts the needle back to its cradle. The album she leaves on the turntable. She moves to put a blanket over the sleeping form in the recliner. She stares down at him. He has the gentlest of smiles on is face. She is tempted to bend and plant a soft understanding kiss on his forehead. She gives in.

He stirs only a little. The smile briefly glows on is face. He confuses her kiss for another in-between sleep and the darkness. She is glad she kissed him. She pats one shoulder as she turns to leave the room. One last glance back at him sees the sad songs he listens to, written in his very posture. A tear forms in her eyes.

“He must have truly loved her.”

Those words, and that thought, make a melancholy move towards her heart.

She returned to the Nurses Station.

She would play a sad song.

---