Read time: 1 min.
Her phone charger scratched on the pillow next to her ear. It should’ve sounded like a record needle scraping the vinyl while a DJ threw a conniption fit and passed it off as music. Instead, it sounded like her father using a straw broom on an olefin carpet after the Squirrel Visit. It hurt her ears and made her gag. Always had done. As a kid, she’d once asked her grandmother not to sweep while she was there because the sound scratched her throat.
Response: “This broom ain’t nowhere near your throat. Just think ’bout somtin else.”
“Like what?”
She kept scratching the charger’s USB-C connector on the pillowcase, inching it closer to her ear till it poked her ear canal. She felt the cold metal against her dry skin, visualized her ear turning red to match the itching brought into clearer focus by the new stimulus.
The charger slipped from her fingers, the last bit of energy having drained from that hand.
Her internal narrator _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _
“Said nothing?” said Nothing.
No clever analysis, no grand implications, no abstract dissections…
The static shifted hosts to the ceiling fan’s whir.
She had nothing to do and nothing to solve and nothing to read.
So why wouldn’t her eyes close?
Because she had Nothing to do and Nothing to solve and Nothing to read.
She’d have to make something of Nothing.
Her hand brushed her phone. The screen lit up with an ebook of Sappho’s fragments. 67A. The itch in her ear cleared and she found she could read again.
Semi-Random Reflections 
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