Blues - Fading to Gray

Since my baby left me

Ain’t no music in my soul.

I said, since my baby left me

There ain’t no music in my soul.

She took away the sunshine

All I got left is gray and old.

I looked across the room at the singer. Head back, eyes closed, his fingers wringing sadness from guitar strings late into this night.

“You’re playing my song, brother,” I said, so softy no one heard. “You’re playing my song.”

For much of my life, I’d lived in the shadows. She changed all that. Everywhere she went, life was a blaze of color. You couldn’t look at her without being dazzled. Green eyes, red lips, flame to her hair.

I was dazzled. So dazzled, for a long time I couldn’t see. So I shut my eyes and saw all the colors she brought to our days, to our nights.

She changed my life from shadow, then changed it back again.

I used to find people. I was good at it. It’s what they paid me to do.

I found her. And I found him. I found them.

There was one last flash of brilliant red. Then my world grew dark again.

I still find people. It’s how I pay my way, now I have nothing left to lose.

I look once more at the singer. “I’m not here for you tonight, brother. No matter what you say, there’s music yet in your soul.”

I drop a twenty in his glass. “Me? I lost my soul two, three lifetimes ago.”

I drift towards the man in the expensive suit pouring expensive champagne into two much younger women. He’s the one I’m here to find.

I’m still good at it.