I want all the songs that give you goosebumps
to live on one single piece of wax, a low rumble
that spans acres, that stretches for miles in each
direction, that raises the skin of all who can see
and feel its grooves and pushes each of us to swim
in sound.

I want you to find all of the noises that pull you
and hold them in your heart as tightly as you gripped
the note I passed you in class complaining about
our professor's tenuous grasp of English grammar, the
ink sweating through the notebook paper and staining
your fingertips. Hold these noises in your heart and allow
the tones to imprint themselves inside your chest, next to
all your other organs.

I want you to sprawl yourself inside of all of this
calamitous cacophony such that you don't know
where your breath begins or if it's part of the melody
or the harmony or another part entirely that you've
never experienced or thought possible, like alto clef or
diminuendo or a vibration in your stomach that
snaps you back to exactly where you are, exactly
where you are.

I want you inside of all of the waves, inside all
of the resonating structures, like unreinforced
masonry and rebar after a larger earthquake
than any of us anticipated, like a tuning fork
standing tall in the middle of the city, like a
memory you can't get out of your head, like a
cold beachfront property sitting high atop
eroding ground.

I want you to reach over to the stereo and
pause before lowering the volume, thinking of
my face listening and falling in love with the
crashing of instruments and electronic tones
and I want you to know that when I was with
you I was inside of all of it, feeling the rough
edges and all the parts of it and dulling the pain
from your sharp angles jutting out in my direction
and I want you to put yourself in my head and think
what it would be like to have to avoid eye daggers and
unspoken thoughts.

I want you to fall inside of the music and allow
yourself to be pierced by its high treble and
shoved by its low bass and I want you to think of me
and how all the sounds are mine and how you will
never catch me sharing my records with you again
and how the needle pokes your fingertips when you
try to drop it and how that feels, bleeding on the
vinyl, alone.