Nostalgia is the little girl you see drawing on the sidewalk with colorful chalk.  Her favorite lollipop flavor is watermelon.  She also likes cotton candy and Blues Clues (she sings along with the theme song and yells “pawprint!” and “clue!” to her TV).  She is the girl who lives in the big blue house at the end of the cul-de-sac.  She wears silly bandz from her wrist up to her elbow and makes all the other kids want that limited edition glow-in-the-dark piece of rubber.  Nostalgia is a gets a little sad when she falls and scrapes her knee.  And sometimes― sometimes, when she breaks one of her precious silly bandz, or loses one of the jibbitz on her blue crocs, or doesn’t want to wake up in the morning but has to anyway― she gets a little sadder.

Nostalgia doesn’t really know what she’s going to be like in the future.  She wants to be a pet doctor, as she calls it.  She wants nothing more than to not be sad, but who knows who she will turn into.  Bitterness? Grief? Wistfulness? All she knows is she will eventually turn into someone else.  Nostalgia just wants to keep her silly bandz, keep playing in the woods, fake sick in bed, and never move out of her big blue house on the corner of the cul-de-sac.  Nostalgia never wants to grow up.  Does she really have to?

a note
    a letter
        a chord

in this context, all the same

her calloused fingers pluck heartstrings and play a cutting refrain of four three two one
she tells a story
of a girl who has no idea what she is doing
whose hands are supple and young
whose fingers count out four three two one

she listens
she plays
she has no idea what she is doing

a letter
she writes
she reads
she tells a story
she has no idea what she’s doing
she plays a chord of four three two one
her heartstrings have been plucked

she
her
different people
same chord
same letter
same note
four
three
two
one
different girls
same note
same chord
same letter
she writes
she reads
they have no idea what they are doing
she reads she writes
things change
different girls
same letter
same chord
same note
but these two share it
four
three
two