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four-four, clumsy and common. She tried to measure her
breaths, but the time signatures kept changing, and she
could not count them in anything constant. She gave up
on trying, eventually, but she never stopped wanting to
know.

The day she turned eighteen, she drove downtown and
walked into the shadiest tattoo parlor she could find,
leaned on the front desk, said she'd pay cash, asked if she
could make a walk-in appointment. They didn't turn her
away, and she walked out an hour later with a small black
treble clef, tightly spiraled and red around the edges,
inked on the tender inside of her wrist. After she'd gotten
used to its presence, she'd glance at it, every so often,
when she thought she needed to be reminded of who she
was.

It's still sitting there now, masked by a thin layer of
stage makeup. She rubs the foundation away and stares at
the ink, just above her veins, more haunting than the
ghost of any past could be. It is not exactly a work of art,
or a badge of honor, or even an expression of identity.
Sitting dark and tight and small on her skin, it is more
like a scar.

The night she graduated from high school, she walked
a mile, alone, down her long straight country road in the
dark of the early morning hours. The parties had quieted,
the gatherings broken up. She walked to a field and sat in
the long grass, looking upward, watching a world unfold
before her eyes. Little glowing pinpoints, winking into
existence, shyly emerging from their hiding places as she
stared. She listened and she thought she could hear a

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