Let Her Sing To You

So, here's a story about a story.

I was inside of my old house, inside of my head. I was walking around and I sat down and pretended I was still walking. It was vacant, and although cold is usually the feeling, the Florida heat was making it ever so slightly above bearable temperatuess. I closed my eyes and felt a sweat droplet on the tip of my eye lashes. I tried to close them harder and make it fall off but it sat at it's perch happily and refused to vacate. I didn't open my eyes again for a long while.

I pretended I was still walking around the house, observing the rooms, dark and hollow. Everything was so much bigger, it's like the place ballooned out or warped unnaturally. The house seemed ill at ease.

I don't know if I got up or not, but I went into each room, and saw ghosts of my past inside of them. I watched a young me in the bathtub with toys, laying out at night by the heater, playing cards with her in the kitchen. I, even describing it now, can't help but feel that circular tingling sensation you get about your eyes when they want to start watering. I imagined every Christmas. Every god damn one. I watched us grow up at lightning speed. I watched us at our happiest, giving eachother trinkets of what we saw. In me they saw music or games. In her we saw cooking or literature. I imagined our various trees. It's laughable now, sitting in an empty house, pretending it wasn't empty.

I thought about Mr. Brightside, and how it's true, that someone will drive her down the same streets that I did. Someone will live in this place again. And I hope that I'm still around. I made a pact to break in. To tear all their furniture down and throw it out because it's not how I remember it. I will show my son where I grew up and describe it so that the ghosts I feel flickering in and out of my reality, will become real to him to. I want him to know what a place it was. Because let me tell you, it was.

I felt ignorant and selfish, but I tried to put it into a song, it's all I could do in a house by myself. And I showed that song to another girl. She said I didn't have to but I wanted to. I was so impressed that I could trap that emotion, bottle that sadness and reopen it at will. I almost didn't make it through the song for my voice breaking. We both stared at the ground for a long time afterwords and she said simply, "I'm sorry."

I've played that song so many times now I don't even begin to tear up. It's scary. It's like the only time you could ever understand what I was trying to say was the one time I couldn't even say it.

Maybe that's the point.

Anyhow, if you ever hear me play a song, you'll know what it's about now. If I seem tired or weary it's because I'm searching for that weakness again. I revel in the hollow walls. I live in that moment, alone in that house. I live in that place, watching endless scenes of myself and my loved ones at Christmas time.

And for me, that will last forever.