The silence after the last song

It’s 8:32 a.m. and I just played ‘I’ll Be Around’ by The Spinners on repeat for ten minutes, not because I needed to, but because I wanted to hear how it sounded when no one was listening. The way the bass line hums under the morning light—like something buried in the floorboards of an old house. I keep thinking about that one request from 1997, a woman who said she’d be home by 2 a.m. and never called back. The tape’s still in the machine. I don’t know why I haven’t erased it.