Miles,” Mark Sheffield Brown

Mark Sheffield Brown

I got the album in its cardboard sleeve from the city library that looked like a dim cave that day, the aquarium in the corner glowing like a lantern. I carried the record home in the rain, clutched under my shirt, holding it against my hunched belly like it kept me warm. On that rainiest day, I listened to Miles Davis for the first time in my front room. “It Never Entered My Mind.” Sapped white sun barely made its way past the windowpanes, and the black, grooved vinyl shone in the weak light. At fourteen, I’d never heard him before— his horn high, piercing, menacing. The bass’s soft, somnambulant heartbeat punctuated the rain outside diving into the ground, rushing under the grass in my yard, washing desert dust out of my gutter. The house was empty. The world was empty. Every shadow of the house held loneliness. I just wanted to try things. Maybe this is who I am, I thought. Maybe this is what I like.