You hand me a vinyl,
black, red, cold on my fingers
you told me it was your favourite song of your favourite band
and you wanted to share it with me
I play it on my grandmas old record player
it spins slowly
the sound growing and cascading
like the music notes waltzed around the air in front my vulnerable eyes
and it was loud
but I loved it
my record player is damaged now
it jumps and skips and repeats repeats
and skips and jumps it
blurs the words together until I can't make out who sung it or when I heard it last
I hear you
even though I can't remember how deep your voice is or whether you stutter when you are scared
I hear your laugh
and the crack in your voice when you told me you were going away
I heard you leave
and never look back
People don't understand that the first thing you forget is a persons voice
and people don't understand that hearing you was like an orchestra in my mind
no I don't mean a melodic symphony out of a 50's movie
I mean the kind of discordant cacophony
so huge and so loud
I can't fucking breathe
or think
As you left you took away my ability to infatuate, or to love
without hearing those violins screech and sting with as high a frequency as my thoughts of you
and the vinyl keeps spinning with information about:
your little brother
your house on the countryside
your favourite movie's favourite song's favourite singer's birthday
(which you called me a lucky bitch for sharing mine)
I bet you didn't even know my favourite colour
And the time I met you in that music shop I was wearing underwear with vinyls embroidered onto them
telling me to stay on track
but they didn't take into account the power you had to scratch the needle on my surface just because you went away
and I kept asking:
Was it something I did? Was I too forward? Was I too annoying? Was I too available?
And I just wanted to scream
So that it could drown the violins
And people keep telling me there will be other fish in the sea. But I don't want fucking fish, I want him.
And I knew this wasn't real. I should've known that unrequited love burns just like bleeding eardrums. I knew I was turning up the stereo too fast, too chaotic.
But I had been living in silence for so long, I needed some rock and roll.
