Samuel Stiles :: A Love Tragedy

Lisa got her stipend check and word that a professor was looking for a sublet while he went on sabbatical. I got laid-off from the newspaper and figured living cheap on Lisa’s dime in some other man’s house wasn’t the worst way to spend the coming year. So we packed up our apartment, ditched our crummy furniture and moved to this big old house on the north edge of campus.

Lisa spent long days in the university lab. I spent mine thinking about looking for work and not unpacking our stuff. This came to a head one evening when Lisa, home late, stumbled over a box in the dark living room. She was irate, asking why the hell I hadn’t fixed up our house and what I’d been doing with my days. “I’ve starting working on a novel,” I lied.

She went on a tear, ripping boxes open and strewing the contents about, leaving piles of miscellanea in every room, eventually collecting the cardboard and dragging it to the basement.

I heard her cry out and pulled myself off the couch and down the stairs. There were thousands of butterflies pinned in finely crafted mahogany display boxes. An entomologist’s legacy. “Wow, that’s a goddamn lot of butterflies,” I muttered. “And a few moths,” she replied.

Track List (right-click to download):
Johnson City (8.1MB MP3)
Sing a Song For You (5.5MB MP3)
Dreaming Of You (6.7MB MP3)
Alone Again (3.6MB MP3)
Darkness (6.8MB MP3)
A Minor Place (4.2MB MP3)
Instrumental (3.1MB MP3)
A Blacking In Your Mind (5.8MB MP3)
Burn To See You Again (7.1MB MP3)
Inside Of You (3.1MB MP3)

All Instruments by Samuel Stiles

Recorded by Adam Waller in New Orleans, LA