Evening Song | By Yash Seyedbagheri

At dusk, I leave dark rooms and packaging my sister’s DVDs and clothes. I go out onto the deck, replete with Spotify playlist and glass of Merlot. Nan and I used to do this nightly.

Looking out onto cathedrals of pines, sweeping hills, and lingering snow, I blast Debussy, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, notes mingling with peaceful expanses. All of Nan’s favorites. She loved Romanticism, hated restraint. Formalism.

I fill and refill the Merlot, keep the playlist going. Images of Nan’s smile rise into the air, knowing and crooked. Nan and me twirling in the middle of a country road. Laughter, crackling and untrammeled by expectation, bursting.

But lavender and peach give way to navy blue expanses. Stars creep out. Blue turns to black.

Nan’s smile disappears. A truck roars down the road, oblivious to the ice. The ice that glimmers menacing and clear under a full moon. The ice no one cleaned.

Meanwhile, copies of Cyrus, The Big Lebowski, and lavender nightgowns await their departure.

I walk into the house, the music fading, each step slower and longer.

---

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. His stories, "Soon,” “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” and "Tales From A Communion Line," were nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.