The rhythms, the notes, the fear

We moved through songs together, all of them about and containing us. We put them on like shedding skin in reverse, stealing layer on layer of mutual identity until we understood what it was to be thick as thieves.

That’s how we found ourselves on a yellow-black Kawasaki, riding into the Western sun and feeling like pirates. Or how I knew she was born with flowers in her eyes. Or us together on a piece of construction equipment with spray paint, a deck of cards, and a bottle of something while paper birds flew over our heads. These things, they were ours through the transitive property. That’s how songs are written.

How long can a thing like that keep up? We should have known. We should have been aware. You can’t flee forever in song, and we perhaps grew desperate as time went on. She became a gun street girl, I got lost in Ybor City. Or we just saw how we kidded ourselves. Now I sleep in headphones and wish it hadn’t happened this way, wanting that life back, the one we lived three minutes at a time.