It’s an average day with average weather
driving down an average road in mid-september.
The radio is on,
the volume is up,
your favorite song plays,
your car is your club
and just as the melody comes to an end
it fades into another blends
present with past.
You hear the opening notes
your breath gets stuck in your throat
there’s a sickness deep in your gut
and tug on your heart but
you tell yourself your illogical.
You tell yourself it’s just biological,
trying to listen with your ears and not your heart
but the notes are torture, tearing your scars apart.
You’re bearing them whip for lash
because what’s killing you is the past
until you find yourself
reaching out
to switch stations.
I think you might understand when I say
there are some songs you just can't listen to.
Two years ago you heard that song for the first time
and it became your anthem.
The beat and you aligned in rhyme and time
and you even sang it too,
although, a little out of tune,
but you were so happy then
singing it with him.
The song was a soundtrack to your everyday life
played it twice in the morning,
thrice in the car,
throughout your day at work,
and after at the bar.
So the song is infused with all those feelings,
marinated in your memories,
baked till golden,
and now too good to eat.
Old playlists are perfect snapshots of what your life used to be,
hollow pictures of feelings rather than images
of who you were rather than what you saw.
The ⅜ time marking the pace of your heart
the major modulation, how you felt at the start
because some songs are made entirely out of memories.
The type that are scratched and recorded over
that you wish ill to the composer.
The type you wrote with people who are gone.
that you can’t bear to re-live, even through just a song.
The type you tried to erase
and the song is an ugly reminder you can’t face
because it's proof that you can’t erase a memory,
you can only hide it from view.
Worst of all songs don't change,
ten years out of use but
note for note,
beat for beat,
it will be exactly the same
You, on the other hand, are completely revised.
Not one hair on your head, skin cell on your body, can be recognized.
We do everything in our power
to love the present more than the past
still you’re jealous of the song
that lives on in your own history
without you.
See you didn’t want to change
but you did.
And the song is proof.
You’re staring into the hole
a happy memory left behind.
Longing for something
that doesn’t exist anymore.
So you don’t play the song
-- can’t play the song.
You hide it
wherever you’re hiding
the rest of the memories.
