Music can take you anywhere. Maybe a certain song comes on and you’re a child again, watching your mother sing into a broom with her bright, booming voice, eyes sparkling with joy and mischief. Maybe you are in the rain, your heart leaking out of your chest and onto your too-colorful rainboots, wondering if the ache will ever end. Maybe a song, to you, is your first love, or your best friend from elementary school, or the stranger on a bus that you had daydreams about until the day they stopped taking it, and you always wondered… Music, to me, is everything: it’s the people who shaped me, it’s the lyrics which shook me to my core, it’s the rhythm that matched the tears dripping down my nose. It’s life, love, heartache, pain, beauty, and wonder. And still, more. I have so many memories tied up in music… if you’d like to know the songs and the memories, the people themselves inevitably attached to them, well, continue on, dear reader. Who knows? Perhaps you’re in one of them.
“This Kiss” by Faith Hill– I am a child, in the backseat of my mother’s minivan. We are waiting for the Bridge of Lions to go down once more, watching the billowing sails on boats as they scrape the sky itself, cutting a path through the jade seas. My chin is caught in my fist as I make up stories about the shapes in the clouds: the fish that was born to fly, the kitten who thought to unravel the sun like a ball of yarn, the lost princess peeking out from the panes of blue and white. My little sister is in the front seat, chattering on and on, and my mother is nodding. When we hear the intro to the song, we all start to squeal. It’s a Heffernan girl favorite. My mother starts to sing, with a voice that I believe rivals Faith’s, honestly. Her blue eyes are shimmering as she and Faith sing about magic kisses and fairytales. Alexia is bobbing her head and shouting the lyrics, and I am trying to catch the melody of it in my young vocal chords. We’re all so caught up in it that we don’t care how long we’ve been waiting at the bridge, or how hot it feels when the windows are down, a coat of humidity that adheres to your skin. I know my mother is thinking of our father, her soulmate, and the way the gentle giant loves her. My eyes sting, but I’m not sure why. Beauty? Happiness? My sister slipping her hand into mine, my mother’s in hers, the connection between all of us? All I know is that this song, this moment, and this town, are magic.
“Brown Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison – My family and I are in the kitchen of our house in Ohio. It’s a work in progress, my dad says, but I love it just the way it is. Old scuffed floors that have seen so many shoes, ladies and gentlemen, anger and love. The potbelly stove in the dining room that we like to gather around in the winter, after sledding and hot chocolate. The loft bedroom that I share with my sister, glow in the dark stars on our ceiling, the skylights that catch the light in raindrops. Right now Van is singing about brown eyes and love, and my father has gathered my mother into his arms. They’re swaying together, hands clasped tight; her head barely reaches his shoulder. They don’t call him Tall John Heff for nothing, that’s for sure. My sister Alexia’s doe eyes are warm; this song has always meant something to her, as the only brown eyed girl in the family. Mom’s are winter sky blue, and mine are a mix of blue and gold. Lexy is effervescent with light, and part of me wishes that I had that within me, that kind of shine that drew people from every which way. I can’t resent her for it, at least not right now; we are in a shaky truce that might last a week or an hour. Sisters are like that. My dad is humming as he twirls my mom around. She reminds me of a faerie queen, and my sister and I her two princesses, like the stories she tells us. Right now she’s laughing, jubilant, happy to be with him. When you’re in my dad’s presence, the world always seems a bit brighter. He’s always reminded me a bit of the Jimmy Buffett kind of pirate, especially when I hear stories about his youth in Philadelphia. The older I get, the darker the stories I hear, but it never diminishes my love for my dad. In fact, it only makes me love him more. That this man, with scars on his skin and heart, came out of that darkness with a tanqueray and tonic, an array of stories both fictional and fact, and a smile for anyone and everyone. And now, Lex is jumping up, unable to stand still, and I straighten as well. We jump around and sing the chorus together, the sun speckled kitchen shivering with our laughter. I hope it absorbs it, and that we can hear the reverberations of it echo, when times get hard. Because they will.
They do.
But for now, we are our own solar system, taking turns at being the sun.
“Lady Marmalade” on the Moulin Rouge Soundtrack – I am in my best friend Julie’s music room. The grey Ohio days have fled, the light pouring in through the windows and the French doors like sunflowers melting into the wood and walls. I live for these days, now that I’ve lived where it’s entirely grey for half of the year. There is a group of us girls crammed into the tiny area, trying to learn a dance and rehearse it. We don’t totally understand what “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi” means, but we know enough to know it’s naughty, and that makes us all giggle. There’s something pure about the moment: Julie’s lily pad eyes twinkling, Heather’s dark hair catching the shimmer of afternoon rays, Lexy’s freckles moving ever so slightly as she grins, and the pure gratitude and energy in my own lanky body as I shimmy- because I have friends. I have friends that like me, warts and all. They listen to my stories, read the books I like, daydream, play “war” with the boys down the road, go on “nerd walks” and pretend that going to the corner store down the road is a safari-like adventure. Sometimes I go to bed with a smile on my face, because I’ve never felt a… a warmth like this.
In this moment, I try to do a split, and it doesn’t end well. Lexy almost nails it, to no one’s surprise.
Julie’s mom comes home eventually and we have to leave, so Heather can practice violin and Julie the flute. They both play so beautifully that it’s hard to protest, even though I don’t want to leave quite yet. The sisters roll their eyes as we are ushered out, and we all wave goodbye through the prismatic windows.
I know that tomorrow, I can come back. And the day after that. And the day after that.
There’s a freedom in knowing that you’re loved so completely by someone other than your family.
“King of New York” from Newsies (1992) -We are dressing up as Newsies for Halloween, and I am impatient to get a move on. It’s been months of our “Newsies” obsession, and I’m still not quite ready to give it up. It was Laura and I that started the movement, originally. It was just another summer day when Ramona introduced me to her friend, Laura. Laura had dark hair that curled every which way and fell nearly to her waist, eyes with fractures of amber and emerald that reminded me of the fey themselves, and a smirk that was so familiar it seemed to cut me open the first time I saw it. We were both writers, both obsessed with the same music (evanescence, my chemical romance, AFI – all the amazing emo bands, of course). She was like an impossible myth I’d yet to discover, and our connection felt fated. Another thing we soon realized? We were both obsessed with the 1992 movie “Newsies.” She claimed Kid Blink, I claimed Jack, and so it began: fan fiction, memorizing the dance movies, watching the movie over and over and over… That summer it became our drug of choice, and we drew everyone into our orbit of mania. We would link arms and sing “Seize the Day” or deliver one liners that made no sense to anyone but those of us in the know, great ones such as: “Baby born with two heads? Must be from Brooklyn.” Right now, I smooth my dress down over my hips. I was delighted to come across the find in a thrift shop that Laura and I frequented, often. Ivory and vintage with frills, it struck me as something some girl newsie might have worn in the year 1899; at least, that’s what I was telling myself. I really just wanted to wear a dress. The other girls have chosen slacks and newsboy hats, funky vests and bandanas around their necks. I am squealing in excitement as everyone swaggers around with an overly exaggerated New York accent. We are all buoyed by the charm of the evening, by each other. I look over at Laura with a shit-eating grin. Sometimes I can’t believe I’ve found this kindred fey spirit in the most unlikely of places. I can’t wait for her to read my newest fanfic.net installment, and I’m salivating to read hers. Life feels joyful, beautiful, and innocent tonight, as we raucously gather candy, the Queens of Clintonville, rather than the Kings of New York. We’ll take it.
“Dead Disco” by Metric– St.Augustine sunshine and a briny breeze that tells me the sea is close. I’ve got my head leaning back against the passenger seat of a red mini cooper as I bask in the heat and light. I wonder if I stick out my tongue, will I taste the salt in the air? I laugh out loud at the image, a golden retriever girl with her tongue lolling out of her mouth. My friend Alex looks over at me, his dark eyebrows climbing up his forehead, which only makes me laugh more; they remind me of black caterpillars dancing. Nicole and Lexy are in the backseat, wondering what’s so funny, but the laughter seems to be infectious, because soon we are all doubled over in a fit of wild laughter; the ecstasy of youth, friendship, and green smoke that echoes in my body like undulating waves. Soon, Alex is turning up the music, drowning us in it, and we all go willingly. I’ve never met anyone like Alex. He’s so entirely himself. I remember when he showed up at St.Augustine High School, and the rumor mill began circulating: who was he? He was driving what car, the coop? Did he have a girlfriend? I smiled at him in class and he approached me afterward to say that I was very pretty and then leaned down in a whisper to assure me that he wasn’t hitting on me, because he was gay. I leaned in closer and whispered back: “I know.” His dark eyes widened and then he laughed, a bit disbelievingly. After that, we were inseparable. Alex, Nicole, Lexy and I – we were our own group. We made our own rules. We ate fried food on the beach together, drove around singing Britney Spears and getting stoned before class, drank margaritas pool-side and talked about boys and fashion, stomped around in each other’s clothes until we were all screaming with laughter. Alex was the epitome of cool. There were some times, however, when he got a haunted look in his eyes. He told me about a tragedy that he couldn’t escape from, a deep soul wound that I wanted, so desperately, to heal. But those times of sorrow seemed so rare. Alex was… he was like a will o’ the wisp and St.Elmo’s Fire and a sparkler all in one. He was dynamic, explosive, unique and charged, a rare phenomenon in this quirky seaside town. And one of the best things about Alex was his taste in music.
I’m blasted back into my thoughts by a husky voice singing about dead disco and London. I feel like the music is plucking at my organs with melodic fingers and I close my eyes to soak it in. Thanks to Alex I’ve discovered Metric, Architecture in Helsinki, Gnarls Barkley, the Silversun Pick Ups, Hollywood Undead, Ladytron… and Shiny Toy Guns. He’s inspired me to do my own deep dives into new music, and I’ve discovered Azure Ray and Rilo Kiley, although I never find as many amazing artists as Alex does. When I open my eyes to look over at him, his mink colored curls are writhing every which way, his doe eyes large and sparkling in a way I’ve never managed to imitate. I envy him that, and his unnaturally long lashes.
“I love you.” I whisper it to the wind, floating on the joy of friendship, wishing I could express all the happiness within me to Alex himself – but I know better. He’d only grimace at me, roll his eyes and distract me by tossing one of the many cups I’ve taken into his car onto the ground. Exactly as a best friend should do. In the backseat, Lexy and Nicole are saying that we need food before we all starve. Alex sneers as he whips the car towards our favorite pizza place downtown, and we all scream as Alex laughs maniacally.
There’s a yearning in me. A simple longing to bottle this moment for eternity.
“We Are Pilots” album, by Shiny Toy Guns – A montage: MySpace poems, a black and white photo of a drizzly day in New York City, a red hibiscus, tawny eyes, pancakes and a rooftop, a chilly beach, frenzied laughter, rain drenched kisses, park bench picnics, scavenger hunts… he was my first love. Elijah the lion.
We are driving down A1A in his red Honda, and my tanned legs are turned towards him as I watch every emotion cross his face. He’s so expressive, it’s fascinating to watch; I think I could spend hours observing him and the way the light catches in his amber eyes. I grew up with the love story of my parents always playing in the background of my mind; when I was chasing the boys in elementary school, when I dressed up in my ruffled dresses and felt my cheeks go pink at the gaze of a surfer boy, when I mooned over boys who either didn’t notice me or who teased me so badly that I cried, and when I imagined up stories of the one who would love me so much I forgot all the heartache. But of course, there was a part of me that didn’t believe it would happen.
And then there was… him.
He swept into my life like a summer thunderstorm: quick, unexpected, rolling like sensual heliotrope clouds over my Atlantic Ocean curves. It wasn’t head over heels as much as spinning into another tempest- like galaxy, this raw-boned poet holding my hand and heart. He had me from the moment he smiled down at me with a hibiscus in his hand.
No one told me that love was like… this. I’d wondered of course, when I pressed a romance novel to my chest and sighed, or when I’d see my dad pull my mom into his arms and tuck her head beneath his chin, swaying with her to their own music.
I wondered. But didn’t know.
Sometimes, when people get struck by lightning, they’re left with scars. Lichtenberg scars, also called lighting flowers or lightning trees. They’re beautiful to see, almost otherworldly. The scars typically fade within hours or days. I felt that Elijah’s love hit me like a lightning bolt and then unfurled on my skin, bones and heart, fractal patterns that branched over my stomach and hips, my femur and ventricles, like magic. Only I knew, even then, that these would never fade. It was a devouring kind of love. If he was nearby I couldn’t help but reach out to him, needing him to both ground me and send me flowing back to the atmosphere in light and electricity. I curled myself around him, like ivy and flowers, my blonde hair wrapped around his fingers, my lips skimming down his cheeks, my palm pressed to his chest to feel the racing of his heart. It was… explosive. Teeth and nails and shouting in the rain, only to end up curled within the shelter of his arms, laughing and crying.
It was everything a first love should be. And more.
A haunting melody begins to play through the speakers and I bite my lip, unaccountably nervous. I’ve never made a mix CD for a boy before, let alone the boy I’m so damn infatuated with that it hurts. Sometimes just seeing him makes my chest ache, and I have to rub the place where my heart is, reassuring myself that it’s still there in its cage of ribs and tissue. That he didn’t take it from me while I slept beside him.
I put a lot of thought into this CD, including artists like Azure Ray, Shiny Toy Guns, Play Radio Play, The Postal Service, FREEZEPOP, Van Morrison’s “Moon Dance” – anything that made me think of him.
Carah Faye’s voice begins to weave its spell over us and I let it take me, let myself be flooded with the enchantment, just the way I was the very first time I ever heard this song. To me, it’s alchemy, and he is the one I choose to share these secrets with. Please let him love it, I think.
“Doll,” he says softly, his nickname for me sweet and tender on his lips. I blink up at him and there, in those topaz irises, I see the same wonder. Tears prick my eyes, and I’m not even sure why. Is this the moment my heart splintered, becoming a fragmented piece in his? I don’t know. I just know, right now, that I’ll never be the same. And now he leans over to kiss me, the lyrics and his lips annihilating me. I reach up with both hands and feast on him, wanting him with a magnitude that I can’t undo. He backs away and laughs, wildly; his grin promises everything and I sink back, elated and shaken.
This band, Shiny Toy Guns, is now ours. No one can ever touch them, no one can ever be their memory to me, but him.
“Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett –
Being a human kind of sucks. Being a teenage human especially sucks. And being a teenage human with, what the doctors call, “clinical depression” – that’s like the fucking cherry on top of a fucked up sundae. I spend a lot of time in my room listening to The Spill Canvas and crying, or smoking with the windows cracked, blasting Pink Floyd. I can’t articulate my feelings well, and even if I could, I don’t want to. I release all the pent up sorrow and rage into my poetry and short stories. When I’m finished I tuck them beneath my bed and stare at the ceiling, letting tears trickle down my cheeks unimpeded.
There are some days when the sun is shining and warming my face, new freckles forming on my lanky limbs as I tip my face up to catch every subtle aurelian kiss. I can hear the ocean roaring or sighing, depending on her mood, and the world is vibrant with incandescence. And I know, I know I should be happy, I should be vibrating with joy. But… I’m not. Even though the world around me is verdant, I feel like someone put a black and white filter on me, and only me; everything within me is muted and drab in shades of grey and shadow, and I struggle to find my place in this place of bright colors. It’s like I’m stuck in this novocaine-numbing bubble. I never understood Pink Floyd when they sang about being “comfortably numb.” I’d rather feel everything than feel nothing.
I’ve been fighting with mom. Again. Lexy and I aren’t speaking. Also, again. The only person in this family that I want to talk to (and who wants to talk to me) is my dad.
It’s funny. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve seen a bit more of that writhing darkness within me, in him. Not often but I’ve seen the grey morphine drip of depression hit him as well, when things appear to be utterly hopeless and you can’t help but hate yourself too, just a bit. I think it’s only made him a more compassionate and loving person; the jury is out on what it will make of me. When his brown eyes are filled with furious or bitter tears, it wrenches my own heart. I don’t know what he’d do without my mother. She has this unerring ability to reach into that vortex and pull him out, even if she has to scream into the void, slip between the folds of time, and yank him into the light. Betty the Brave, his knight and soulmate. Not to say he hasn’t saved her, too. He has. They continually save each other. And I’ve got someone trying to save me, but I don’t know if he can… I don’t know if anyone can.
Dad asked if I wanted to go for a ride and I leapt at the chance to get out of the house. He’s probably doing it so my mom doesn’t strangle me; I can’t blame her, really. I wouldn’t want to deal with me, either. I feel like my thoughts are bubbles, filling this place with a black or grey sheen (never rainbow) and slowly suffocating me. I need to escape, just for a bit.
He climbs into the car, folding his legs as best he can with how large he is. It’s always a bit amusing to see Tall-John try to fit into small places; he’s nearly 6’9”. He turns his weathered face to me, asking me silently what I need before we start. I gesture at the cigarettes I have in my hand and he nods, so I light one up and inhale deeply. My hands stop trembling and I can feel myself slowly relax as I exhale into the insipid evening air, spilling toxins – the cigarettes and my own noxious vibrations. Dad just stays quiet, letting me process, letting me calm down.
The words come, eventually, in a mudslide. Mom, Lexy, Elijah, Florida, Ohio, depression, my friends, my medication, my therapist, my lack of direction in life. I cry and smoke, smoke and cry, and dad just lets me. When I’m all out of words, and tears, he puts on “Cover of the Rolling Stone” by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, which he knows will make me smile. We sing along together, dad being over exaggeratedly ridiculous, knowing I’ll at least chuckle. I was surprised he knew this song, the first time I played it, and he was surprised I did. I always tried to trip him up with music, just to see if I could stump him, but my dad was way cooler than me. He’d just give me a sarcastic look and say “Of course I know this one, are you serious? Do you know who this is?” And I’d bluster until he belly laughed. He was the kind of person you couldn’t help but want to be around. When he laughed, you wanted to be in on the joke. He’d go from teasing you mercilessly to making you a delicious meal and sitting you down with tender, paternal care, and suggesting a rewatch of Never Been Kissed, since he’d already “seen it more than any man on earth anyway!” His words, not mine. Still, he never complained (much) when his three girls ganged up on him and put on yet another romcom.
Like I said. Way cooler than me, in every way.
He ejects my very scratched CD with all my pirated songs from Limewire. I grumble only a little bit as he puts in a mix that mom made, and I feel my lips twitch as “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett comes on. Wherever I am, whether in a grey Ohio winter or a sticky Florida summer, listening to Jimmy Buffett transports me to a perfect blue sky and calm ocean waves, a delicious sea breeze caressing my skin. I can feel the rigidity of my body ease as I close my eyes and pretend I’m at The Conch House, sipping a virgin daiquiri, the tiki huts in the sky transporting us to an ocean of stars and waves made up of constellations.
“Hey,” dad says, startling me from my reverie, “you see that house? What do you think of that one?”
This is an old habit, going back to childhood, and perhaps before. I can imagine him taking me on walks as a baby, strapped to his chest, while he pointed out different houses and gardens. “See that turret room? Those arbors need some redoing. That Victorian has good bones; could use a fresh coat of paint.”
Dad loves the little details of a house: stained glass, marble counters, gables, Spanish tile roofs. He’s fantastic at fixing up houses (and people, honestly), but he can get stuck on those tiny details sometimes. Right now, though, I’m not worried about that. That’s mom’s job. Right now, I just want to drive with my daddy-o, avoid life, listen to some good music, and deep dive into the beauty of a place that someone else calls home.
“Well, I hate that color-”
“Terrible!” Dad agrees, and I grin.
“But the stone addition is really cool. And the garden, wow. I like the trellis with the wisteria. Can we do that?” I turn to him, cigarette dangling from my fingers, forgotten. Just like the tears.
“Parachute” by Sean Lennon- Sometimes I wonder if I’ll actually die from this heartbreak. I’ve been reading about broken heart syndrome, or takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Stress hormones flood your body and essentially paralyze your heart, which keeps it from working as it should. I’ve written stories about heartbreak like this. I wrote one where the protagonist was so heartbroken that she OD’ed to stop the pain, watching the prism splash rainbows onto her eggshell walls as she slipped away. Or one where he walked into the cold and heavy ocean, willing himself to become a merman – or merely waves and kelp. Anything but what he was. I used to dream of loving someone so much that you felt as if you’d die without them, actually die. I thought it was romantic, you see? That depth of feeling appealed to me: a misfit teenager, misdiagnosed with depression. The little girl who was never wanted or loved beyond her family because she was too “odd.” The child who chased but was never chased. The girl who never had a boyfriend, who was only teased and mocked by boys with leering faces.
I wanted to love like that. I wanted to feel heartbreak like that.
And now I knew what that felt like.
And I despised it.
The loss of Elijah was too much. My heart was screaming at me that it couldn’t take it, that this grief was too painful to endure. I shattered glass bottles and smoked too many cigarettes. I listened to Shiny Toy Guns and wept. I screamed until my throat was raw and bleeding. I collapsed onto the sidewalks and ripped my tights, skinned my knees, when that grief hit me like a tsnunami. It was something that even writing and poems couldn’t articulate. I let the journals sit untouched as I glared at the sun, wishing for a rainy Monday and a Time Machine.
The only comfort I had was Julie. It was odd, wasn’t it, that we’d fallen in love at the same time? Odd and somehow spectacular. As we slowly fell, we’d call each other and gush about the men who had taken our hearts. Julie and James, Elijah and Elisabeth. J and J, E and E. Julie was a photographer, James was a musician. I was a writer, Elijah was a poet. It was written in the stars, our love for them, their love for us.
Why didn’t anyone remind us that the stories behind the constellation are, so often, harrowing? What about Orion, slain by Artemis herself after her own brother tricked her? He was placed in the stars, a consolation constellation. What about the nymph Callisto, raped by Zeus to bear his son Arcas, inciting the wrath of Hera? Mother and son reunited in the sky, only the sky. Was that to be our fate? Loved, only after becoming stardust?
And this fate, unlike the constellation myths, was all my own doing. I wondered if Aphrodite would ever forgive me for ruining this love, for ruining this perfect boy she’d put in my path.
She might, I thought; but I’d never forgive myself.
I wonder, was it Her magic or mine that turned his tawny eyes to forest green flecks? Was it his reward? And why did my eyes change, too? From dreamy blue to crisp green? Was that my legacy and reminder, for my fallacy?
He was my sun. I was his moon. How can you go on living without the sun? I am the earth without that light, slowly decaying under blue-grey ice. Will he find another moon to control the tides, the primitive throb of wanting, blood and magic?
Julie and I are driving aimlessly and crying, trying to come to terms with these broken heaps in our chests. Her fingers are curled over the steering wheel and her large aquamarine eyes are overflowing. I don’t understand how James could have left her here in Ohio, could have ever left her at all. She’s a landlocked mermaid, one of the most talented and beautiful people I’ve ever met. She always says things like how she’s not wanted, admired or seen, but I see the opposite. I see the way her slow smile can trip up a grown man who catches sight of it, how children try to grab her laughter as if it were bubbles in the air. I’ve seen the way her copper hair sways as she dances with her eyes closed, how the boys at the parties all shuffle around her, too intimidated to say anything. I want to punch her ex-lover in the face. I want to shake him until his mind is rattled, until he doesn’t know up from down, because maybe then, he’ll come to his senses. Because… Who in their right mind could let this woman slip away from them? Who could ever hope to find anyone as remarkable as this girl? How could he say goodbye to her? I know he’ll regret it until his dying day.
Julie didn’t do anything wrong.
Unlike me.
James moved away for college, and left her shattered. I moved back to Ohio, and left Elijah in Florida, with my heart. But the truth is, I’d ruined things between us long before that. His eyes went golden cold long before we said our last goodbyes. I took the road map of our future, his promises to me, the raw adoration, and ripped it to pieces with my own crimson-red fingernails. Who was that girl? Who was that girl smirking at me, lighting the match and setting my own future aflame? The sky was not beautiful when the trees were burning, I saw. It was only orange and empty, the ash piling up around me, lodged in my lungs.
I couldn’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
“Play that one again,” I croak to Julie, wiping more tears off of my face. “That one… that one gets me.”
“James showed me this song,” she whispers his name as if saying it out loud is painful, blisters forming on her tongue and lips with every vowel. I hope it hurts him, when he murmurs my friend’s name. He would deserve it.
Like I do.
Julie pulls over and we weep to the dulcet sounds of Sean Lennon and parachutes, death and love and dying for love.
I pull out the letter, smoothing it over my knee. I know it by heart but seeing it in his writing, tracing the little illustrations he drew and the lyrics in the margins, reading the poem he wrote for me… it makes me want to bash my fists against my chest and howl. I wonder if that would get it beating again.
Julie pulls out her own letter, her hands shaking ever so slightly. We exchange a look, loaded with almost 10 years of friendship: we are little girls reading the Hobbit and dreaming of friendship, we are crawling through the pipes in Walhalla as only children could, we are dressing up and going on Nerd Walks, we are doing the chub dance to convince her mother to let us have a sleepover, we are in the clubhouse watching scary movies under the electric blanket, we are in my loft while I tell stories about the men who will one day love us, we are sending each other letters when we are separated by hundreds of miles, we are crying on the phone about the distance, we are writing poetry about falling in love, we are giggling and whispering about first kisses and first times, we are drinking together to numb the pain.
We are in the car, tonight, reading love letters from the men who will always have a piece of us.
But we are lucky. We have slivers of each other’s hearts as well, and we will nurture those, with sugar cookies, music, and holding each other tightly so that we don’t completely fall apart.
And one day, maybe, we will be in the same constellation together with the men we love, right now, more than anything. Even if, right now, they don’t love us.
Stardust-afterlife-love.
It’s all we can hope for.
Well I had too many songs to fit into one blog post so this will be part 1! I hope you liked it, and are prepared for more! 💕 And the link is below for the playlist, if you’re curious 💕
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpoubqxFUDR-unlEJybxLg8Ky1lmBA7Le&si=psKm690lFpCIy_jz
Elisabeth Writing 
2 responses to “Songs and Memories: Part 1”
Stardust-afterlife-love…
and the kind of song that can busk on the corners of such a trinity so that the whole Universe dances.
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One could only hope 😂
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