“Favorite Song”

 
I know it’s late where you are but
God I wish you were awake I want to tell you about
the music and the stars and
running from the car to the hotel in the freezing wind

you are from a place with lots of trees and red brick but
I am from a place thatched from corn husks and dust and
I’ve always kind of thought it looked like
heaven and I’d like to show it to you, someday,
you’ve never seen clouds like we’ve got cause we’ve got
the whole entire sky stretched above us
and the kind of flatland that makes you want to
run and run and never stop running not even when your lungs
heave gasoline and your joints are stones sparking
fire that is how you know you are
seconds away from sprouting wings

just because I have spent my childhood sprinting
barefoot across asphalt does not mean I will bolt
as soon as the door cracks open it will simply mean I want you to
chase me follow me to the creeks I was baptised in the
parking lots I danced ballet in the
wind who taught me how to finally speak
for myself and to myself and maybe
to you if you would like to listen

it is my favorite song.
I know it is late but I will never stop
playing it, and if you’d like I will play it
for you.

—

I wrote this in early January, after seeing the Lana del Rey concert in Chicago with my best friends. We stayed overnight in Naperville after the show because the roads were too icy to make the drive back to our city two hours south. It was one of the best days I’ve had in a long, long time– we had tea in a proper tea room and bought crystals from a proper crystal shop and wandered around a bookstore eating cheesecake, and then saw our favorite performer in one of the most heartfelt performances I’ve ever experienced. Top three, for sure, and I’ve seen Joan Jett.

Sitting on the hotel bed after everything, I just wanted to write, find the words worthy of what this night was, but nothing came out but this, all in a rush. I don’t even like it much, but it was written to a boy, asleep nine hundred miles away, and I never sent it to him, and for that it feels all the more significant. Like “Tim McGraw,” if you’ll forgive my cheesiness. “In a box beneath my bed/is a letter that you never read…” That’s what I like so much about Taylor Swift. Her songs fit the beginnings of somethings just as much as they fit the endings. (Best rec off reputation: “Delicate”)

That boy isn’t a thing anymore, and probably wasn’t ever actually a thing, but I’m good at deluding myself. Good at telling myself, “this is what you should feel, so this is what you’re going to try to feel.” But then everything feels too forced. Not even just in this situation: it feels like I’m forcing myself to text someone back when I can barely stand texting anymore, it feels like forcing myself to update snapchat so my mum doesn’t text me saying, “All ok? You haven’t updated your story in a while…” There’s this expectation for me to keep showing up, as the me I’ve resigned myself to being (out of fear of what? The unknown? Screw that.), when all I want is a month alone in a cabin in the woods, by the water, where I can just listen to Lana del Rey on repeat and let my phone die a sweet, sweet death.

Don’t roll your eyes, please. I know I’m taking everything too seriously. I’m just tired, and that makes things a little too loud. Makes a girl wanna go a little Thoreau.

Lana has a song called “Change” that makes the world feel infinite and my heart all earthquake-y. When Lust for Life came out, I played this one song for three straight days. “There’s something in the wind, I can feel it comin’ in…” I could just copy and paste the entire song because every lyric is vital, but I’ll just put the chorus. “Change is a powerful thing, people are powerful beings/ Tryin’ to find the power in me to be faithful./ Change is a powerful thing, I feel it comin’ in me/ Maybe by the time summer’s done/ I’ll be able to be honest, capable…”

There are things I’m working towards. There are big things, really really really big things, right around the corner, and I’m finding a good soundtrack for my self-prescribed metamorphosis. But I also just can’t concentrate on anything anymore. I don’t know what it is. That’s why this poem has no real punctuation. I can’t figure out the complete thoughts and declarations I want to give to someone, I only know they’re inside me, waiting.

So I quote Fitzgerald to myself as I walk the mile home after class: “I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start over again.”

All my heart.

xx,
M.

photo taken years ago in Illinois while on a car ride with a much beloved person