Again the last one awake in the house.
Frozen in front of her laptop,
she only listens to the playlist
when she needs to untangle her mind.
Brain foggy, bleary eyes blinking periodically,
she chases melodic echoes around labyrinth corners
instead of peeling body from desk and stumbling to bed.
The synthetic chords of that bubblegum pop song
sucking her into
the pshew-pshew-pshew of video game violence,
bright colors zooming at a mile a minute,
laughter, grins from ear to ear;
she drifts
from kids piled together on the couch
to peppermint tea, to midnight ice cream
to unfaltering, scrawling signoffs of love on birthday cards,
back when boys did not pretend to be made of stone.
The next song, slower—
piano
notes
pattering
rain on the window, tears on a page—
but she relives it all,
sprinting ahead, sneakers pounding against asphalt,
shoving aside the school building door,
tapping her foot in the empty classroom,
waiting for his
“I have something to tell you.”
ready to whisper that it was okay,
that it didn’t change anything,
that she would help in any way she could.
She braces for the crescendo of what happened next—
one-phrase charades that feigned eloquence and hid emotion, an empty gaze that murmured a circuitous trail of words
the decision to seek what he needed but didn’t want.
Her breath shudders as the music dwindles,
a bottomless cavern
(albeit a ghost of what it had been before)
growing in her stomach,
hands fiddling in her lap as they had been when the school counselor hummed and asked,
“Well, you clearly care a lot about your friends,
but what are you going to do for yourself?”