That isn’t Mine

Shortly before I took this photo – of a vinyl that isn’t mine, with songs from a generation born years before my time etched in its grooves – I picked through a wooden crate in the reading room of a house that isn’t my own & placed the record carefully onto a turn table that isn’t mine, dropped the needle, & sat on a couch that isn’t mine but has clearly had several previous owners. I listened, through speakers that aren’t mine, to the words of dead men from yesterday that exist today on one side. Wearing a shirt passed down from a sister that was not mine and garments swiped from the communal locker room bin, & holding in one hand a coffee mug that’s not mine but half-full of wine – I typed this excerpt to post on an Instagram account that isn’t mine. // by Julia Robitaille (📸 my iPhone)