Music


Nobody - Mitski

Sometimes I am the only one who can hear me,

I queue Nobody by Mitski

and I convince myself 

that I am the only person that I will ever be able to trust.


The air is cold and my jacket is thin,

but I go outside anyway,

because I need to be somewhere else,

when I cannot be someone else.

To wipe my own tears, 

lean on my shoulder, 

to offer myself a sip of water.


I sit on concrete stairs looking down at all of the places that I wish I would take me to.

I want to leave.

I want to stay here.

I am frozen.

I am static.

I am alone.


I look down at a patch of grass where I would like to lay out a checkered blanket and sit under the sky.

Hugging myself,

sharing warmth with myself,

singing myself to sleep:


Nobody, Nobody, Nobody


I am the negative space in a self-portrait,

completing a simple composition,

holding my face in both hands.


Who can I talk to when I cannot hear anything?

This song plays over and over in my ears,

so loud that there is absolutely nothing else.


I sink into the melody,

my whole body vibrates,

maybe she is why my hands shake.

Her words echo in my hollow head:


Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody, Nobody





All the Time - Bahamas


I lived an entire life in the span of three minutes yesterday.

I fell asleep and dreamt that I was another person,

I lived in a little house in the suburbs with gray siding and a slate roof,

I worked as a receptionist, 

I had a husband, 

A dog, 

Two kids.


But when I opened my eyes, only three minutes had passed on the clock beside me.

A whole life,

In only three minutes,

I must have seen it all at the same time. 

Puzzling.


I can think through her entire imaginary life,

I can recall minutes, days, years.

But that must have all happened at the same time.

All of her major life events:

The loss of her first tooth, 

Her high-school graduation,

Her wedding night,

All squeezed into three minutes.

No end or beginning.

Just one brief, but full, moment.

A snapshot,

A highlight reel.


Maybe that is how time really works,

I’ve heard that we only perceive time as being linear,

That really, everything is happening at exactly the same point,

The same instant,

That the human brain can only process things so quickly.

Which is why we see things the way that we do.

I think our dreams give us a glimpse into how this all really works,

That these subconscious visions hint at the true format of reality.


All of the moments are really just stacked up on top of each other,

So tall that we can climb up the sides,

And look down and see a straight line from top to bottom.

A line that connects the seconds,

minutes to minutes, 

days to days,

years to years.


It’s like when you take pictures on a digital camera and you go to the drug store and print them out.

When you lay them one on top of the other you can only see how many you have,

Each picture is a moment.

Each picture is a sound, a taste, a smell.

It is easy to get lost in a stack of moments.

But when you splay them out

One next to the other,

When you connect them,


You can tell a whole story.



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