Stay up late, watching the hours pass by through the thick lens of sleep.  The computer glows against the dark shadows of the room.  A song plays and replays, the whistle of a train passing through endless stations.  Fall asleep, wake up, work, repeat.  (I’m On Fire from Born In The U.S.A.)

My mother’s own Bruce Springsteen

The half moon glares down at us as you stand opposite to me on the small balcony.  Below us the city is a ghost, dead in the depths of winter and night.  The snow stopped a few hours after sunset.  Our breath billows out in fleeting clouds which can only be seen if I squint, just so.  Here, like this.  It doesn’t matter.  I wrap my scarf tighter around my neck, tuck it into my jacket.  The cold air still seeps in.  You stare at the horizon, where the ocean shifts below the blanket of sky.  I have nothing to say now.  

A wind brushes past us and through the buildings lit by the moon.  If I could have it all back, you say to no one in particular, to me?  I’m never sure.  (Rococo from The Suburbs)

So much Arcade Fire 

Dear,

The weather is much warmer now.  Today the world smelled of sunscreen; coconut and summer.  I traveled, secretly giddy with the sunlight, to the small beach near the old Chinese cemetery where the geese lounge during the day.  The rocks were hot to the touch, and I shifted my feet amongst them when the chilled breeze rolled in from the ocean.  My book, pressed upon me by my mother, was of the thrilling chase of whales and stars and those lost.  I have found myself thinking as the book speaks.  Sometimes I miss a shadow of you, like a sudden shiver of dread, an echo.  I still don’t really understand it.  I hope you are well.  Really, I do.  

Love, 

I watch you look out to the horizon, past whatever stands before it.  Sometimes I think that everything makes sense, you confide to the ocean that breathes loudly below us.  In this moment we seem to stop and stare out before us, blind.  Sometimes I don’t understand you.  Sometimes I think it doesn’t matter.  

Sometimes I can’t believe it. 

A midnight thought, alone in the darkness, is almost never welcomed.  Yet it rushes to meet you like an unfriendly winter breeze.  Asleep as you are, defenseless as you are, it is believable.  It is a vivid reality, a memory warped by time and want and dread.  You grasp it, desperately press it close to you even as you wake.  Then, like a whisper, it slips away. (Kettering from Hospice)

Repeated songs from The Antlers. 

A wild cannon, she ran restlessly to the ocean, stopping only when her toes brushed the oncoming tide.  Her wide brimmed hat waved as the wind rushed to meet her.  The blanket and wicker basket sat abandoned near the line of sun drenched driftwood that lay along the shore.  Her auburn hair, long now, flew about her face, kissing the ocean breeze as it flew by.  ”Hello,” She whispered to the horizon and what lay around it, “I’ve missed you.” (Cecilia, a cover by Two Door Cinema Club) 

Of Simon and Garfunkel

I can feel the ocean’s waves rushing up to meet me, rumbling below my feet.  Wildly, I wish I could become them.  

Dear Someone, 

The new house is charming.  I love the beach.  It smells like early summers, waving goodbye from a shaded ocean lookout, picking blackberries by the road, and cutting my feet on hidden barnacles.  The spring hasn’t quite warmed up.  I am wearing a sweater, laying on the floor.  I miss what you were to me; it isn’t personal.  I miss the cherry tree outside my window.  It upsets me, but I don’t know why.  I don’t understand.  Everyone is home now, which is to say far away.  In this time, between the cold April showers and June sunshine, I am unhappy.  Could I have helped you?  Every day I walk down to the ocean.  Anyways, hope you are well.   (Postcard From 1952 from Take Care, Take Care, Take Care)

Sadly, Explosions in the Sky

The sun rose silently above the Greyhound that ran along the USA 40.  Kathy shifted in her seat, wary of waking her companion.  She paused for a second before pulling the old travel blanket closer to her chin.  Beside her, he slept with long, low sighs.  Once again she rested her head against the warmed glass window.

She was so far from home.  

It was the end of March, near her mother’s birthday.  He had brought her flowers that bled bright yellow and blue.  She placed them in the vase which sat in the window above the kitchen sink.   As he left her in the doorway he turned back for a moment, “I love you.”  He had said as he closed the garden gate, his dark hair askew in the spring breeze.  

Oh, I love you.  Kathy closed her eyes in the sun’s forgiving warmth.  Her companion sighed restlessly in his sleep.  She realized she did not want him to wake.  (For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her from Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme)

For them, Simon and Garfunkel   

I knew you, once.  

As you thrash in your bed, fighting hard against the nurse and I, you scream with your desperate eyes.  A wild stream of hate echoes from you with words I thought you didn’t know.  You hate me; don’t worry, I know.  I try to soothe the mind buried underneath what you are now.  I know, I say.  Please, I repeat.  You are a shivering mass of blanket and skin and twisted auburn hair.  

A wind rustles through the open window, past the curtains that rush away from it.  The misty blue bedcover brushes my legs as you shift in your sleep.  It is past midnight.  Silence is a cloud that consumes the room that you often call a prison.  I sit in the armchair beside your bed, quietly terrified I might compromise your peace.  My eyes blink slowly in the darkness.  

“Sylvia,”  I whisper, knowing you might wake, “I can’t remember you.”  (Sylvia from Hospice)

Seriously, The Antlers 

Some people say that the moment you meet that person, the rest of your life begins.  The second you shake hands, or awkwardly nod to each other over the roar of a Saturday night party.  In that second, according to some, the direction of everything shifts; you are Alice falling through the rabbit hole.  They say it can only happen once. 

They must have met in September.  It was a communications class, a requirement for a degree in business; a common enough goal.  Any combination of two thousand students in business could have been in that class.  Out of those two thousand, any one of three hundred could have chosen the seat beside her.  

She sat with the notebook resolutely before her, a pen cradled loose in her palm.  

He looked at her with a hidden smile and dark, round eyes, saying nothing as one thousand thoughts whirred blindly through his brain.   (Kettering from Hospice)

The Antlers