Coming back to me at the concert
During the song
I bought a single ticket, but I didn’t realize I don’t go anywhere alone anymore.
At the show, swaying to the ones I know,
I’m with the Me in the subway, insecure but trying to make it to work on time.
I never am.
Approaching the turnstiles, I thought the isolation I felt, headphones in, trying to make something of my twenties, was temporary.
I wasn’t giving enough.
Sweaty and sick of my hips in the summer,
I’m with the Me stuck to my humid jeans trying my best,
headed to the bar hoping someone would pick the Me up that is here now, today, but we didn’t know each other yet.
She fucked a French writer slash actor slash alcoholic that liked her sometimes and was disappointing.
He spoke of NPR and I wonder if I was always waiting for her here.
She didn’t dream of the day we’d meet.
Sitting in the apartment on Humboldt,
primed and ready,
pretending to be a beacon of capitalism, mouth open, drooling for a piece of the promise from parents
They told us of castles.
Not of railroad apartments with racist roommates and all of the failures that aren’t our faults.
The band sang “I thought I lost my pack”
And I was with her and me in the car where her bumper was held on with a bungee cord and she kept gin in her glove compartment, screaming the same line in the wrong time, every time,
We could not speak the same language in crisis
I miss her so goddam much.
The songs are green and black as they slip out of their mouths.
I press play on her sitting,
and myself sitting
and swearing to all I’d do “After This”
Now it’s After This
And we’re still
Still.
They spoke of a line
A monument planted in a place no one can find
Between then and now
Them and us
Her and me
We went searching for it and found smoke.
We’re all together now
And we all brought one more
The brown boy next to me is drunk and cheerful and I wonder what kind of clothes his plus one wears, what his playlists looked like, Before This, and how much he’s lost.
The twinkling men in the spotlight and their twins,
All as gone as I am
Drifting forward but still in this place
I give myself grace
Stage shining, men shaking,
Shards of ourselves splintering off our sides and shooting into our minds eye, like a fever,
Me, you, and the whole band
Singing secret stories to each other
But only I can hear them.
And her.
She doesn’t go anywhere alone anymore.