Six O'Clock Music

I was at the stove when the music started.

That specific song, the one

you can't unhear once you hear it.

Six o'clock and here it comes—

the notes falling like they're tired,

like they've been falling all day

and this is the last street.

I could have gone. The window

was right there. The street

was right there. But I stayed

at the stove. The music kept going,

bending around the corner

of the building, and I listened

to it disappear into the regular noise—

car doors, someone calling,

a siren somewhere far.

The jingle died. It took time.

Not a sudden stopping

but a fading, a stretching

of those same notes until they

weren't notes anymore, just

the idea of notes,

just the memory of music

that was never mine

to begin with. I didn't go.

I stayed. The water kept heating.

And now the song is stuck—

not the full version, just

the part where it was leaving,

that bend in the sound

as it rounded the corner

without me.