After a long day of what I call "Battle of the Genders", it was actually something else that started with "Battle of the", I get to my dorm room to relax for a while. Picking up the photo albums I have, I look through all the pictures, every last one, all of which bring me to tears. One picture is of Tail Flight on the mac I have at home. Another is of her preening herself.
Derek peeps into my room and calls out. "Josh!"
"Yeah." I look at Derek but not after drying my eyes for the fifteenth time this month.
"Talent show is going to start."
"Okay. Be right out." I set the albums under my high bed as I grab my card key and my guitar. I head to the common area as I wait at the front door for everyone else.
"Count off!" Kahlil raises his hand to hear who's present.
"One."
"Two."
"Three."
"Four."
"Five."
"Six."
My turn. "Seven."
"Eight."
"Nine."
Melissa raises both of her hands as she belts out a muffled "ten". That is when everyone starts cheering as we all head out to the room we went through admission in.
As I get to my dorm room, I try to focus on getting all those "songs" out of my head by listening to some of the music on my phone. I tap "Jogging music" and push play. What starts playing is Owl City. One of my favorites from that artist was playing. "To the Sky" was the name. Thinking back to what Simone said about what those "songs" consisted of. I don't believe her with her saying that those "songs" contained real instruments. To me, as long as something does contain an instrument all the way through, I consider it music.
That is when the song changes to "Clock Strikes". I listen to a few more songs, one of them being one I wrote, and all the noise that played is completely out of my head. I ask myself in my head, how could you get so much noise out of your head only listening to just five songs? The answer I find to be very simple. But I might as well spare myself the pain of re-answering that.
Parker suddenly comes in saying hi and all that jazz until he notices what I've been listening to. "The... rainbow... and... the... runners... Is that a band or something?"
"It's my musical name." I looked at the phone and sure enough, it was on one of my songs. As Parker closes the door, I see the note I put on the back of it. It's that same note of which I blew at which somehow caused a copy of it to disintegrate. I look at it and start to tear up. Thankfully, Parker doesn't notice.
I think of all the times I had back at Maine and home with Wind Rust, Tail Flight, and Wiretap. We had a lot of great times those forty days we were together. I just wish it would've been longer.