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Stauffer, Maya

Exile 
Volume 72 Number 1 Article 16 
Floral Fireworks 
Maya Stauffer 
Denison University 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/exile 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Stauffer, Maya () "Floral Fireworks," Exile: Vol. 72: No. 1, Article 16. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/exile/vol72/iss1/16 
This Image is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Denison Digital Commons. It has been 
accepted for inclusion in Exile by an authorized editor of Denison Digital Commons. For more information, please 
contact eresources@denison.edu. 
21 
Floral Fireworks 
Maya Stauffer 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


English

Floral Fireworks

Stocker, Charlie

Exile 
Volume 72 Number 1 Article 20 
Excerpt from Every Song Ends 
Charlie Stocker 
Denison University 
Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/exile 
 Part of the Creative Writing Commons 
Recommended Citation 
Stocker, Charlie () "Excerpt from Every Song Ends," Exile: Vol. 72: No. 1, Article 20. 
Available at: https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/exile/vol72/iss1/20 
This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at Denison Digital Commons. It has been 
accepted for inclusion in Exile by an authorized editor of Denison Digital Commons. For more information, please 
contact eresources@denison.edu. 
25 
Excerpt from Every Song Ends 
Charlie Stocker 
 
On an evening unremarkable to most, in a quiet hospital waiting room, Jaden learned how to 
play bass guitar. 
He learned helicopter anatomy. He learned that a single X-ray usually takes no longer than 10 
minutes. He learned about lung fluid; or rather, fluids in the lung. He discovered the irony of elevator, 
mall, and hospital music. 
To play bass guitar, his fingers could not be so stiff, and neither could his ankles. He learned his 
foot was just as important as his hand, his arm, his shoulder, and his ear. Without tapping the rhythm 
with his foot, his heart would be the drum that set the tempo. 
These were musical lessons his dad had tried to teach him, and that he could have learned by 
paying more attention. To learn them in his dad’s colorless, getting-colder face was to drop his heart 
into a void. 
And yet, it was exactly that which taught him to play. 
“You try, Jaden.” 
Sitting on the hard carpet of his dad’s brand new New York music studio, the last thing 
fourteen year-old Jaden wanted was a bass in his hands, and it wasn’t a secret. Still, his dad’s slender, 
calloused fingers gripped the red and bronze bass at the end of his outstretched arms. 
“I think I’ll just sing, Dad.” 
“The beauty of having vocal chords–” He put the strap back around his neck, he looked like a 
soldier “–is you can do both.” 
And now Jaden could only do one. 
He had thought he didn’t want to be like his dad. He had felt like a shadow, living within the 
immense size of his name. At his highschool in New York, he had been looked at differently, spoken to 
differently, and was a musician. Letting go of his dad’s identity was what he had thought he wanted. 
Only then could he be alive, he had thought. 
Since his dad’s passing, since his own suicide attempt, the sensation of his heartbeat had 
abandoned him. And now, in the fading wake of his memory, music was all that was left of Jaden. Left 
of his dad. Each resounding bass note became their shared pulse. The tempo didn’t matter, because as 
long the strings beneath his fingers shuddered into booming sound waves, they lived. 
You can do both. 
He could play his heartstrings and his dad’s. He could live while dying. He could love his mom and lie 
to her. He could get out of bed at 7:30am and still make it to school on time. Possibly. 
 
 


\u3ci\u3eExcerpt from\u3c/i\u3e Every Song Ends

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