An old house without much furniture,
bare walls, bare floors,
and a bare light bulb hanging from the center of the ceiling of a back room...

No curtains, no rugs, an old bean bag chair and some cast-off couch cushions,
empty bakery boxes, soda bottles, and a record player by the window
with a stack of 45s playing sad songs...

For The Good Times with Ray Price's voice from the speaker,
and a small framed picture of The Only Important Person In The Whole World
leaning against the record player,

with a candle burning in an old Chianti bottle next to it,
ribbons of old wax layering down over the bottle,
as was the style back then...

A small box of tissues, a grocery bag for trash, half full of tear-filled tissues,
and an old black and white patterned notebook filled with bad love poems,
where you are trying to pour your emotions out onto the pages

because you don't know what else to do...
because you don't know how you will be able to go on,
because your whole entire life has just collapsed, and sad is an understatement.

Another record drops down, the needle grabs the groove,
and you are hearing the Everly Brothers tell you how to cry in the rain...
and you wish that it was raining, because you would do that.

Andy Williams joins the party, singing a song about a lonely street,
and your emotions seize the words, knowing exactly what he is saying,
but you ache so much you can't see beyond this moment, and you despair...

Looking around, you see the world you live in,
and you wonder how you got to this particular place, this moment, —
then you remember - you arrived on the heels of another devastating breakup,

and you thought this time you would have it better,
because this time you were really, truly, in love,
and you were loved equally in return... this time.

Somehow, though, you were fooling yourself, or being fooled again,
and it all ended up the same way as it did before,
although this time it lasted a few months, slowly coming undone,

to where you finally ended up in this little room,
in this little house without furniture,
with a bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling...

Tomorrow morning someone will come by
and they will find you, across from the light bulb,
hanging from the ceiling...

...and the record player will have stopped playing.

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Copyright©2017-1999 by Rebecca R. Hammack

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