Lyric

I’m listening to these records like they contain the Da Vinci code. Like if I hear the lyrics for the fiftieth time, everything will finally click. There’s no cure for the kind of loneliness that comes from feeling like you aren’t on your home planet so I listen and listen and listen and just maybe, the record will create a portal. I need to reach out to those closest to me who have been singing these melodies for a decade plus. I treat these records like precious commodities and I treat the people in my life the same. Not that I respect them or am loving toward them, but the obsession. A stream of questions until they don’t have the answers. They will never satiate my thirst because I don’t know what I am taste I am longing for myself.

While I wait for these songs to make everything else make sense, I try to emulate these strangers I have welcomed into my home and head and heart. I write and rewrite, trying to find the balance between earnestness and safety. I am trying to do what has been done for me, but I am not sure I am capable. Every few years I decide I desire vulnerability but then I remember my fear. I used to be sincere and kind, but the only way I knew how to survive here was to grow cold. The idea of shedding this shell I’ve spent three decades building is absurd. It is all I have to show for my time on Earth.

So I keep listening to these albums over and over until I get bored of them and then I set them aside for a few months. The people find themselves in similar situations. But these songs don’t perceive me. These songs don’t ever know more than I’m comfortable with them knowing.