"I'm always right" was what I always told her
The first time we went to a party, full of drunk adolescents
playing with the idea of adulthood,
I said nothing would go wrong,
I was always right.
We ran through the trees when the sirens sounded.
I gushed to her about a boy who was handsome and perfect and such a gentlemen,
She frowned and sighed
"He's no good for you, he'll hurt you" she said.
I waved her off, irritated that she couldn't see it.
She held me six months later as I bawled on her floor,
Showing off bruise that were scattered on my skin
like butterflies and told her about the other girls.
I giggled while balancing a joint between my fingers, unable to focus on her face
"It'll only be this once," I insisted, "It won't become an addiction."
By junior year I was still smoking.
She fretted over me during my dizzying spirals of depression,
I told her
"It's just a bad day, I'm just in a phase."
As I sat in her bathtub as she carefully bandaged my arms,
I whispered "You're always right."
I watched as my best friend began to cry for the first time in ten years.

Music is so much more
Than just rhythms on a page because
I can hear the bass in someone's chest
Or jazz in their laughter
And I can find music
In the way people's voices rise and fall
Or the sound of their lungs
The low trill that comes from the smugness in someone's voice
Or the fast strings of someone panicking
Some people sound like a piano, smooth and quiet
While others sound like the thunder of the brass,
Unable to be missed, but capable of tender moments
Because no one is less than an orchestrated piece
No one notices the subtle parts at first,
Like the vibrato in the solo of their thoughts
Or the sudden accelerando of passion and arguments
The forte pianos of being tired of fighting
Or the single flute of absolute euphoria
But when you return again and again
You fall in love with the way
Words seem to rise from their feet and wash over you like fog,
like a bassoon
Or the quickly improvised comments that fills you with a sense of warmth and safety  
play with the strings of your heart like a saxophone
Because nothing compares to noticing the people
Who are made up of nothing else but music