Echoes of Nostalgia
I am too often taken with my past. Mountains of memories cloud my vision. Time lies to me, makes me believe in things that never happened. I document the same feeling over and over again through the words and music of others. They know how to express it better than I ever could.
But, still, I want to try.
The following passages all emerged from my wanderings through the sepia-colored mist of nostalgia. I find inspiration in odd places: Jazz bars, late-night trains from Bushwick & Coney Island, and often, under the cover of night.
Listen along with me, if you’d like.
“midnight air”
The smell of coming rain. The saved and worth saving. An echo, a reminder: nothin’ ever lasts. It’s one thing after another. It is you I have loved all these years. My friend, my love for you doesn’t change. I try not to, but I’m letting go of every shred of anything that held you here.
“Echoes of Nostalgia”
His breath caught the second she walked through the door. She was wearing the same blue turtleneck she’d worn to that punk show. He’d been the one to drag her there, lost in his own, selfish world. She complained all night of the heat in the pit, but he refused to leave it.
“Just take it off!” He yelled. “Tie it around your waist. I can’t believe you wore a sweater to this thing in the first place.”
He didn’t even look back at her. He was too firmly embedded amongst his compatriots to care. She was too normal for him anyway. She wore Mary Janes to school and read things he thought were pretentious, like Tolstoy and Camus. Her parents were alive. They were still together too. For all intents and purposes, she was lame. What was there for him to crave?
When he looked back a while later, she’d moved closer. Evidently, she also took his thoughtless suggestion. She wore a thin, white tank top. She was sweating, glistening, really. Just the sight of her exposed collarbones set his lungs on fire. As she came closer, she found herself lost in the music too. She seethed and thrashed along with all the other sorry losers who liked that no-name band.
Now, seeing that sweater back on her small frame…the sounds of faraway screams echoed in his mind. He could practically feel the thumping bass through the floor of the coffee shop. He could smell concert B/O intermingling with her Bath and Body Works body spray. (Warm vanilla sugar, she’d called it, or something equally saccharine.)
He remembered how electric she’d been once she shed that sweater like a second skin. He remembered the same caught breath feeling lingering in the back of his throat. It was all he could do not to touch her right then and there. For every part of her unvaried, soulless life, there were equal parts passion and heat. In the pit, he saw everything. She wasn’t sparkling, exactly. It was more that he finally recognized her vividness. Gone was the timid girl he’d asked out just five days before. In her place, stood a gutsy sort of woman, undaunted by the strength and power of the moshers surrounding them.
As she approached the table, he wanted to ask her if she remembered the way he kissed her open-mouthed that night in his dead dad’s shitty Buick. He wanted to ask if she remembered how he easily predicted she’d fall in love with him. He wanted to tell her how deeply he’d fallen for her too, once all their pretenses of cool, lame, bland, and cruel were discarded. He wanted to tell her he still loved her, even if she was seeing someone else and leaving for Boston in six hours. He wanted to ask her to stay, even though he’d lost his claim to her five years ago.
He wanted to ask her if she remembered the first words he ever said to her.
“What are you listening to?”
“Backroads”
The last time I drove these roads, you held my hand.
You told me everything I wanted to hear,
That you were sorry you ever disappeared,
That you still loved me, even after all these years.
I said the same, eyes prickling with unshed tears.
We both admitted we probably always would.
I wondered out loud how we ever could.
You shook your head, arguing every reason not to and also, perhaps, why we should.
“You and I will always bind together like glue,
but that doesn’t make any of this true.”
The last time I drove these roads, you held my hand.
This time, my parents didn’t even ask me about you
when we passed your house like they used to.
Perhaps, like me, they’ve chosen to try and forget.
Unlike me, they’ve successfully put the thought of us to death.
I envy them in their ease.
Your words never brought them to their knees.
They never knew your love, touch, or anger.
And so, they have no reason to linger.
Hours mean nothing now.
They used to, when I could count on one hand
how many it would take me to drive to you.
Now, it’s too great a number to even consider.
One hour, two, three, four, and five.
The further I am from you, the less I feel alive.Where does this ever go? How do we pick up the pieces of broken promises and melancholic memories? Why must we pretend none of it ever happened in the way that it did?
My hope is one day I won’t feel like wanting to kill every part of myself that loved you. Because that isn’t fair. So much of what we shared was good; it was rare.
I think what I miss most now is the way you looked at me. You’ll never look at me that way again.
You say we don’t fit anymore. My once-clever words now used against me…or did you speak them in service of my sanity? Did you have to break my heart once and for all, just to be kind? I suppose, in more ways than one, I got what I wanted. I got my gut-punch. I watched the rain fall. I heard the last song.
It’s over now.
I want to give a huge thank you to my friends in the Quill Thrill Weekly Writing Workshop. These writings exist because of your honest feedback and unending encouragement.