Love is like music.

No, that's wrong.

Having a crush is like an old record.

You may have never noticed it before,

But you pluck the musty dust jacket from the bin,

The diamond in the rough

The magic happens not in the poppy, over-played records,

The blanks people expect you to fill,

But in the scratched, crackly vinyl you found in the clearance

Things are awkward at first,

You must set down the needle carefully, start cautiously to prevent damage

Then, five seconds of crackly silence

Music breaks out,

But like all good things,

Relationships end

Sometimes you don't notice it until the silence in the room suffocates you

Sometimes it ends abruptly because you handled it too roughly

But sometimes you watch the record stop spinning, and you long to play it again.