I really enjoy writing fiction, but I have never put it on Odyssey. Each inspired by a lyric (or a melody) of a song, I have written 26 short stories, with one song for each letter of the alphabet. The original lyrics are italicized.

If you would like to listen along while reading, a self-created playlist of these songs can be found here.

1. "A-Punk" by Vampire Weekend

Johanna drove slowly into the city, savoring each piece of her hometown as it slowly slipped from sight. Washington Heights wasn’t too far from home — and yet melancholic jubilation was welling up inside her. Out of fear and excitement she left her beloved hometown, braving the endless stretch of days and nights under a sky unadorned by stars. The city was approaching, and with it, everything she hoped for.

2. "Blindsided" by Bon Iver

Bike down, to the downtown. Where the food from the corner-side pizza restaurant is more valuable than gold, where the streets on a summer Sunday afternoon fill with tents and tables and people to look at them. Where the river ebbs and flows like the wind on a summer day — where it changes from warm, to cool. Where the snow falls every January. Where you find yourself on a Friday night, two in the morning, basking in the enthralling dark sky and the intimacy of the people beside you. Where you call home.

3. "City of Stars" by Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone

City of Stars, are you shining just for me? Can you see me? I sit upon this hardened sidewalk, overcome by that familiar two-in-the-morning weariness, hoping for a sign that something is coming for me, that someone will find me, sitting here drunk like I’m not planning on living tomorrow, and ask me about my life, ask about what I’m doing, what I want to do, what I can be doing, what I’m capable of. City of Stars, you shine so brightly — but is it just for me?

4. "Daydreaming" by Paramore

Living in a city of sleepless people who all know the limits and won’t go too far outside the lines. I want to find those limits and break them, put my toes over the line, find my out-of-place place. I want to find where the trees reach up their branches to the sky, where the sun beats down but doesn’t burn. I want a reality unlike reality, where dreams are reality. When I dream in the daytime, when the somewhere else I dream of is where I am right now.

5. "Empress" by Morningsiders

Lady, you’re running through my veins. There is something about you that makes me feel like I could take up any instrument and play it. Knowing you is like knowing how to breathe. Let’s take to the dance floor, a ring on each of our fourth fingers. Your white dress, my black suit. I’ll twist you around, knowing you’re mine — enterally my lungs, my heart in my chest. The air I breathe, the piano I play.

6. "Firefly" by Ed Sheeran

I fell in love next to you. You watched a movie like you were born to do it. You sat at a desk, a notebook open before you covered with the small pencil marks I had reached over and made to annoy you, but you just smiled. You hugged my waist like you couldn’t let go, and I didn’t want you to. You placed a kiss on my head where I hit it on the wall. You looked through a camera lense. You ate. You held my hand. You drove. And I watched.

7. "Glory and Gore" by Lorde

There's a humming in the restless summer air. Something like a chaotic swarm of bees, a soft, interminable hum — the slow burn of the sun, or a bolt of lightning. Like something is approaching. Like you can hear the weeds and flowers outside this house growing, growing, without someone to stop them. An agitated hum. It's relentless, untraceable.

8. "Ho Hey" by The Lumineers

I've been trying to do it right; I've been living a lonely life. Simple — the nine-to-five job that lets me pay the rent every month and allow a meal to fill my stomach every day. But, biking to work, sometimes I'll see this exceptionally beautiful girl waiting at the bus stop on the corner of Oak and 7th. There's something hidden in her that I want to discover; a concealed and charing something, a something that makes me feel like we're meant for each other. It's mundane, irrevocably hopeless, but I purposely bike pass by the bus stop each morning just to see her. One day I'll take the bus instead, pay those three dollars just to sit across the aisle from her. I'll look at her for a second, and she'll catch me looking. "Hey," I'll say.

9. "In My Life" by The Beatles

There are places I'll remember all my life, though some have changed. My high school's auditorium, for instance, which I had returned to after a few months at college to see my sister in a play, was painted red — a cherry red, one that greatly differed from the cloudy sea blue that covered the walls when I had attended assemblies there as a student. I took quick glances at the walls throughout the performance and I felt this melancholy weight directly in the center of my chest — one engendered from loss, perhaps, or desire. The change felt harshly personal and unexpectedly sorrowful, even though I knew it wasn't intended to be.

10. "Juke Jam" by Chance the Rapper (Feat. Justin Bieber & Towkio)

We used to roll at the rink. Saturdays at the roller rink downtown with you were my favorite day of the week. You’d play that song, go around and around the rink with your friends while I tried to think of something to say. You’d try and say something, and I would blush. We danced once, one glorious dance, but it was nothing to you. You had a boyfriend, and I was awkward at best. I leaned in for a kiss, and you laughed. Soft, glorious, harmless, like the dance. Like this.

11. "Kiss the Rain" by Yiruma

Head up, palms facing the sky. We laughed with so much joy. Each drop of rain that fell into our open mouths was the water than kept us alive, kept us dancing in the growing puddles in my front yard. The thunder started, and I wanted to go inside, but you kept looking up at the sky, challenging it. Raindrops laid like tears upon your cheeks, sprinkled on your chin, and your shirt was completely ruined, but you didn’t care. You reached for my hand, and we ran into the storm.

12. "Love Is A Losing Game" by Amy Winehouse

For you I was a flame. For me, you were a bitter wind; an angry hand across my face; an empty book on the highest shelf, covered in dust, grime, and filth.

13. "Midnight City" by M83

Waiting for a ride in the dark — It was starting to get really cold, and Colin wasn't picking up his phone. My hat and coat were keeping my body surprisingly warm, but my hands, hidden in my pockets, were freezing. When Colin finally showed up, I nearly jumped into his car, placing my hands on the vents before me in hopes to funnel some warmth into my system. Colin always drove fast, like he was trying to beat a storm to the next town. It was starting to snow, so he was going eighty, maybe ninety miles an hour. I reclined my seat slightly and placed by hand atop where his lay on the gear shift. He put his thumb over mine and pressed down harder on the gas.

14. "No. 1 Party Anthem" by Arctic Monkeys

So you're on the prowl wondering whether she left already or not. While you're looking upstairs to see if she's snuck off with a friend to do a line in the bathroom, she's in the basement asking around for you. "Where's is he?" she asks, but they're too high or drunk to answer, looking for another joint to hit or bottle of beer from which to sip. You walk outside, she walks outside. You find her by the remnants of a fire pit, the dwindling flames unnecessary in the unusually warm summer night. You want to reach out for her hand, but she does it first. Leaning in, slowly, you reach her lips. And as you thumb her jaw and drape your fingers on her neck, you can hear a song emanating from the house — haphazard shrieks and drunken melodies cascading from mouths of the partygoers inside.

15. "Oh, It Is Love" by Hellogoodbye

Oh, it is love; from the first time I set my eyes upon yours, thinking, "Oh, is it love?" Oh, it is love; on our first date, when I was too nervous to even kiss you when we were alone — the embarrassment of an abundance of love. The profundity that accompanies one year of love, and its ability to surprise me a year after that. Love, a mess of misshapen and reconstructed happiness — that cuts my heart in half just to patch it up a moment later. A moment I take for granted, one that I often forget. One that I will, one day, love.

16. "Piano Man" by Billy Joel

It's nine o'clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in. I'm on my third vodka or so, I can't really remember. I can't take anything with the vodka, no soda or nothing. It makes the drunk come faster, but I don't mind because it makes talking to the people here easier. I'm chatting with Carol, my wife, and usually I've come to hate the shit that comes out of her mouth, but tonight it's alright. We're both laughing about our calamitous weeks at work and I can feel the vodka letting loose my tongue. I take out a cigarette, which sometimes I'd do to annoy Carol, but tonight she smokes with me. She's getting to be the same level drunk I am, so I take a few more sips from my glass.

17. "Quesadilla" by Walk the Moon

I must've tumbled out of a plane 'cause I free-fell all year. I saw the world rushing toward me so fast that I couldn't stop and look around until I met you. Then, as if I were a video camera whose eyes could zoom in and out at will, I saw the Himalayas and the snow atop them, the brackish waves in California and the layers they created on the shores of a sandy beach, and the ensnaring green forests, whose leaves explode with differing colors every fall.

18. "Run to You" by Pentatonix

A light in the room — it was you who was standing there. Like some innocuous and embarrassing grade school girl I looked at you waiting for your gaze to intercept mine. I removed my stare in short intervals, unable to avoid the warming light that shone down upon you. You looked too nonchalant, like you weren't supposed to be of this era. I saw you as aloof, underestimated by the people to which you spoke. A quick glance in my direction — those eyes taunted me, and I felt my entrails slip upon themselves. I thought that perhaps there was some intrigue present in your gaze, but then, without the look of interest I so desired, your eyes pulled away from mine.

19. "Sunflower Seeds" by Bryce Vine

Forty ounces and a pack of ranch sunflower seeds. A pack of beer — whichever, they said, but definitely not Bud. Champagne for the last night; wine and vodka. Tea bags, coffee beans; coffee grinder. Mugs. Towels, bathing suits, sun screen, but also jackets and sweaters. A map, but a phone works too. Logs, for the fire pit outside, hauled in the back, even though they'll roll around the whole drive. Chocolate cake and brownies; squashed on the way, enjoyed a few hours later.

20. "Talking Backwards" by Real Estate

We can talk for hours and the line is still engaged. Sometimes I think I too often go off on this humiliating tangent where I'm too much myself, but I think sometimes you do it to. Does that make sense to you? It excites me when we're both exactly who we are in those moments, when we're not acting for the sake of others. Whatever subject we wander into is normal, quotidien. It's comforting, just like you.

21. "Ultralight Beam" by Kanye West

We're on an ultralight beam, this is a God dream, this is everything. Take care of the things you hold dear; life should be one of them. Think of this year, the deaths, the births, the growth and the change, and how the seemingly imperceptible ripples that grow into mountainous waves shape nations around the world. These shifts render us better or worse. This phenomenal world, this irreplaceable life is too unique to go unappreciated. This little light of ours, hold it dear.

22. "Visions of Gideon" by Sufjan Stevens

I have loved you for the last time — is it a video? I play back the blurry outline of what could have been, the shades and outlines of a love gone on different paths. The unutterable feeling of understated agony flows over my head and washes my chest in unfathomable, unpredictable ways. I missed you, and I miss you.

23. "When We Were Young" by Adele

You feel like home; you're like a dream come true. Did we know each other once, or does my memory betray me? Does this liquor betray me? Something in me knows you. You're like a song I heard on the radio, one whose tune was lost by a flood of other memories, other melodies. I want to hear that song again; can you sing it to me?

24. "XXX. (FEAT. U2)" by Kendrick Lamar

America, God bless you if it's good to you. You cruel and rewarding country, you think what you do has no implications. Look at the people who lounge on your hardened seats, who wait for answers on your grassy doormats; the people who sit united in your living room, the ones who stand together demanding service in your dining room. They are asking for change. They are asking for justice.

25. "Young and Beautiful" by Lana Del Rey

I've seen the world, done it all. But I'm tired now. I don't want any more of it. I'm full to the brim of experiences I didn't ask for, encounters I wish I never made. The only memory I want to keep is that summer, when I swam for hours and laid around in between. I knew you were watching me, eyes like my lover's. Both brown, drowning eyes. He would never know about you. You would never know about him. Each night when we stole moments by the shore, hands clasped together like they would never touch again, I didn't think of him. Only you — it was only, and always, about you.

26. "ZVVL" by Chvrches

I think it's time to face yourself again; it's not too late, it's always time. Your mirrors come in varying shapes, but you may never truly see to them until their time with you has expired. Maybe I was your mirror, the one to finally make you see your anger and deceit, to help you look at yourself through the eyes of another, but maybe my countenance was clouded. Was each person you met an opaque mirror? Perhaps I, or others, are not the mirror into which you must peer; perhaps your gaze must extend to the mirror in yourself.