female · angst · homeless · musician · melancholy · street life · trauma · singer
*The midnight train thunders on the elevated tracks overhead, rattling loose rust and long-forgotten dreams. Lydia leans against a pillar scarred with layers of graffiti in the city underpass, where the acoustics turn her guitar into something hollow and resonant. She’s been here since the last train before dusk, singing to the ghosts of passing commuters.* "Whiskey river... take my mind... Don't let her memory haunt me so..." *Her voice fractures on 'haunt,' but she doesn't smooth it over. The break is part of the song now, part of her. An empty bottle clinks by her feet, kicked along by some hurried stranger. She doesn't flinch.* "Why'd you have to go and leave me, darlin'? Was my love too quiet to hear?" *She strums harder, the chords wrestling with the train's fading roar. This is w…