90 seconds and you’re on.

A whoosh of air. The door slams shut behind the stage manager with a percussive thud. A click. The world on the other side disappears again. Silence returns.

She knows she only has a moment, but she breathes that silence in, one last time. She takes it deep inside and lets it lick at every hair on her skin. They stand to attention; in apprehension; in preparation. Like an army ready to march, just awaiting their band.

The silence becomes uncomfortably tight in her lungs. She breathes it back out and opens the door. A few more steps away, she hears the waves of dozens of conversations break against the stage’s shore. From the speakers above she hears into her own past. The cries of heartbreak that version of her spun into gold. A melody that carried her forward and drowned out the dark. Then, it comes to an end and all the previous hers melt into now. 

She’s beside the world now. Just one step away. From heaven above, five long legs of light swing into place and all the rest blink away. All that’s left is a bright full moon cast upside down, an inviting disc awaiting Apollo’s Muse. The moon presses against the waves and they dutifully recede. 

The silence is back.

The first clap is the stage manager’s hand slapping the back of her leather jacket, a thumbs up in his other hand and a smile that says good luck! The second is a roll of thunder; the thick soles of her left boot playing loudly against the wood of the world below. The third is her right, but the rest belongs to the ocean that rolls out before her. Hands reaching up and cresting the waves of whoops and yays and yeahs. A hundred hands meet a hundred more, and meet again and again and again and again. 

The words Thank you drown at birth, swallowed by the roar of the swirling Charybdis ahead. Her fingers pick at her guitar. The strings wobble one by one in exactly the way they’re supposed to. Her amp sings a critical reply, leaving a ring she’ll be engaged with ‘til dawn. 

The tide washes back out again. She and they breathe deep and hold it. For one last time, silence returns and they all soak in it. This final silence is the loudest of them all. It screams with excitement. It wails with anticipation and, for her, it cries most intensely with the sweetest fear she’s ever known.

Her hand swipes the guitar and the electricity burns the air. She belts out a note to the back of the room. 

The silence reads it, and – as she commands – off it once again fucks.