#william stout
Archaeopteryx,William Stout
It was the last love song that meant something. The album dropped when he and she were dating, and the lyrics coincided with his feelings too well. The music, a gentle, uplifting thing, shuffled, chimed, lingered. Its chords beat at the same rate his heart did when she smiled across the dinner table or purred during a hug. He played it dozens of times, sang with it to her in the car, sang along when he drove alone. Then she broke up with him, and the song went unplayed.
Eventually, as people do, he found a new love, but he and the new she didn’t share musical tastes. He never sang to her in the car.
But once the song played while he was alone, a random selection from the iPod’s algorithm, and the world drifted away for four minutes as if it was mist. He was there again, loving that old love. The music strummed his heart, called out through it like a mallet against a gong, but there was no reply. It was a love song for only one, never to be answered, like the call of the world’s last Archaeopteryx, singing for a mate that wasn’t there.
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