Earbuds

In light of having misplaced mine.

***

Every day, he takes out the cheap earbuds and sees that the wires have tangled into a mess at the bottom of his backpack, and every day, he spends the next ten minutes carefully rewinding them into some semblance of order around his hand-me-down Walkman. 

Then he sinks back into the library couch, sighs, and feels the warmth of the afternoon sunshine dance across his skin. There is music playing in his head (around and around, forever there) and he does not notice when his eyes drift shut, and, in a quiet corner behind the bookshelves, he slumbers.

When he awakes, he does so slowly, because he doesn’t want to think about what comes next (he winces at the memory of countless nights spent locked away in a room with no windows, the cries of those around him – another girl came in today) and he works hard to remember that he takes what he can get.

He wishes, sometimes, that he could sleep on that library couch forever. (I would never get back up—and is it wrong to say that may be my one hope?) 

The music stops. In the back of his mind, he can hear the cries of the parentless children and he cannot ignore them any longer. 

So he picks up his Walkman and painstakingly wraps the earbud wires around it, all the while praying that someone would come and take him away. (where? anywhere, far enough to forget) But his plead remains unanswered, and he drops his talisman of peace inside the tattered pack, strides out the library doors, his steps weighed down with anguish. 

(Mama, mama, aren’t I so brave? Look at me—look—
—Mama?) 

By the time the sun peeks over the horizon, the earbuds have dropped to the depths of his bag, whirled and confused and never quite right. 

(Please don’t leave—!)