E standard, no capo

I sat outside in the dark blue-black evening after work, sitting on the edge of some green patio chair. My arms were cold, a baby burn across my forearm healing pink beneath the unattractive scabs and blisters. It wasn't cold enough to merit a complaint. My fingers stayed warm moving across an aging neck: one hand to take stabs at other men's music, the other flailing to make those strings sing. She'd been barren once. I dolled her up the night before, dressing her up in new threads draped across her body. I cleaned her head, her face now gleaming where once it had been dull. The same six earrings, three on each side, found their places in their familiar holes. She was a shining beauty despite the absence of the sun. Her voice resounded while I sang along on that dark stretch of architecture.

Beneath the cloudless sky, I looked to the stars. Those bright dots punctuated the night; I'd never seen so many shine so brightly. I sat in the dry air, her shape draped along my legs. Repeating the same pattern I'd periodically try my voice then find it could not stand in comparison to those of better men. It wouldn't matter; she'd lend her voice despite my failings. Often, I'd stop to look at the faraway shapes of people --perhaps lovers, perhaps strangers-- walking along the evening streets. I'd think and wonder if they heard us. If they did, I'd apologize outright for my ineptitude to sing those same old love songs... but they'd commend her for being so euphonically sweet.

We sat there for a good hour and traded the same songs to fill the vast expanse of air before us. If I had enough courage, I'd sing a song by a man to his love or one of blackbirds or one of a man, tears free in his eyes, misplaced in heaven. And when I knew my off-key melodies overstayed their welcome, she would take the night and make it her song. But when the air grew too harsh and the navy of the night crept on towards black, it was time to part ways. For all the hesitations, I found myself uncharacteristically direct in the goodbye. We walked on past the glass door and into a warmer, greener zone, young woods sweeping before us. She rested on the couch, neck propped on the arm-rest, body drooping awkwardly over the pillows.

The night was done; I walked away into a room of red highlighted by the monochrome black-on-black-on-black. I knew she'd find her rest in some other boy's room that night while I sunk away into my worlds of superheroes-turned-mayors and journalists-turned-proactive. I thought of all the ways I could've extended that hour. My mind raced itself into depression while I took in the colours-upon-inks-upon-pencils of the art in that fantasy world. Words didn't seem important.

But what was done was done; she sleeps in the cooler, yellower, room of a boy I know. She doesn't rest on a bed but hangs her head, as if in shame, while she dreams above the floor. He couldn't care less. And what am I left with but some worthless memory-turned-metaphor that, I know, will be seen as love lost. Oh, there were songs, of that there is no doubt, but how many people sat on that balcony that night in the chill of the night. And is that even plural?

I'm sitting here, hands warm and tapping at some careless keys, with an exercise in my expression --perhaps to rekindle some sort of lost literary love-- and some poor fuck will think I'm talking about the girl I've fallen for.