by Michael Degnan
You practice the song over and over until it is as familiar as your name, Billy McCrae, and the dime-size scar on your left knee.
You pick up your phone to FaceTime your buddy, Jimbo, who sang in your first band in high school, the Phat Beets, and play him the whole thing, which comes in at four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
You tap your foot as you wait for Jimbo’s reaction, anticipating the first time that this natural lyricist recognizes that you too have some ability, that you can also write a hell of a song and stand at the front of the stage.
You check the number of bars – the connection is always bad out here, with Douglas firs lining the campus and no real city within hours – but then Jimbo finally says, “Dude, what the fuck, you know that’s my song,” and hangs up.
You lean back in your light blue wingback chair, your acoustic guitar lying across your stonewashed jeans, and say, “Damn, what a jerk.”
You pick up your guitar and start to play the song again, but as you sing, you trip over one of the lyrics, “Don’t arrest my palimpsest,” not knowing what the last word even means, and you wonder, not all of you, just a voice whispering from somewhere deep in your brain, if Jimbo was telling the truth, and maybe this isn’t your song after all.
Michael Degnan lives on an island in Maine. His work has appeared in Bending Genres, Emerge Literary Journal, Maudlin House, Flash Boulevard, Flash Fiction Magazine, and elsewhere.
Photo Credit: by Spencer Plouzek on Unsplash
