by Jesse Raub
Shuffled #1

The sounds of construction are impossible to escape.  The jackhammer rattles the blinds against the window every morning, and it makes me think of her father.  He was an activist type from the 60s, broad shouldered and full bearded; his favorite thing to do was dismantle construction equipment near forests, letting the parts scatter as they dropped to the ground.

She calls at eight and tells me she’s coming over, but I haven’t even made coffee yet, so instead I sit up in my bed, shoved in the corner of my small, dark, studio apartment and practice conversations with her by myself.  I suggest we go leave notes on the bulldozers down the street, or take a can of spraypaint to the park.  I stumble over metaphors for different ways of saying “I love you.” 

When she pushes through my door she’s already crying, so I stand up to grab her but she lets herself fall face first onto my bed.  I don’t even need to ask, so I don’t.  Instead, I pick up my guitar and start strumming out a few easy chords that she told me she liked once.  In my head, I’m singing lyrics made up on the spot to comfort her, but the only noises in the room are her sobbing, the blinds rattling against the window, and the dry click in my throat. 

When the sun rises high enough to shine into the room, I’m still playing the same chords, over and over, but she’s fallen asleep for the first time that night, still face down in my bed.  I set my guitar down, and want so badly to brush her bangs away and press my lips against her forehead.  Instead, I lie down on the cool linoleum tile and imagine I have my arm draped across her waist, falling asleep while trying to match my breathing with the rise and fall in her chest.

“My Favourite Chords” by Jesse Raub is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

“My Favourite Chords” is a short fiction interpretation of The Weakerthans song of the same name from the album Left and Leaving, released through Sub City Records in the year 2000.  It is the first story written as part of the Shuffled series, in which inspiration is chosen by random computerized algorithms on a well stocked iPod.