Ten Year Trio
Nick Drake Laminated
Sometimes she notices the clock and wrestles with the minutes. 4:27pm. It’s the gray Denver light, the window overlooking the street, Nick Drake from the stereo hidden amongst the boxes, the picture in her hands, the way her consciousness meanders around these things like the smoke from the incense burning in the corner.
She stares at the photocopied image, holding the thrift-store frame with both hands. She imagines the shattered fragments of his cloudy voice and sad, rolling fingers—the scattered soul of a dead folk musician—somehow leaping into someone else. Leaping into her. A patron saint. A muse. She places the picture on a stack of self-portraits. 4:27pm.
She glances around at the defining objects of her life. Her guitar, her journals, her music. She’ll write more songs when she gets to Indiana. She’ll obsess about the men in her life. She’ll get annoyed playing for coffeehouse crowds of tragic teenagers and the middle-aged women who tell her to "be grateful to god for the gifts he’s given" her as if her voice should be a blue sky and her fingers never sad. She looks
in the mirror across the room…the eyes she can draw from memory…her clumped hair. (In her hometown they tsk and hope it’s "just a phase"). She is beautiful. She knows that now, though she second guesses it everyday.
The coffee’s ready, say a voice and the fragrance from downstairs. She stands up, takes her journal. 4:29pm
Adam Schrag