music and poetry

The sound of the music leaked out the windows and as I came up the driveway I could just make out the lyrics. When I stepped inside, Olivia was laying on the floor, open in front of her was my cd wallet. She glanced up at me as I stepped inside. 

“Hey”

“Hey”

“Where did you find this?” I came to sit on the couch and she sat up. 

“I was going through that big box of s**t you left in the closet. I like this song.”

It was Simple Plan, and I was embarrassed, because this cd is so old. I think Katie burned it for me when we were in the seventh grade. wow. 

Suddenly the track ended and the next one started to play, something slow, something familiar. I felt a certain tightness in my chest, and immediately turned to leave. 

Olivia looked up, “What’s wrong?”

“I like this song, but i-”

“What?”

“It hurts too much to listen to.”

“That’s stupid.”

“Okay, whatever.” I got up to leave, but she holds me down. I sink inside myself and try to block out the sound but her voice penetrates six years of silence and floats to me through the music. I can’t do this. It feels like someone is inflating a balloon inside my chest. I’m holding my breath, I realize, and let it out slowly, quietly. I can’t control the tears, I can only stare at the floor and hope she doesn’t notice. My skin itches where they make tracks over my face, but I don’t move to brush them away. Inevitably, she sees. To my surprise, though, she reaches over and lifts my chin in her hands. The kindness in her eyes melts the anger. 

To my even greater embarrassment, a week later she got bored again and I found her bent over one of my poetry journals open on her lap.

She looked up at me, eyes wide and luminous like the harvest moon. “Did you write these?”

“Uhhhhh. . .” Every instinct I have is screaming DENY, DENY, DENY, but I nod. I feel naked. 

She holds out the book to me. “Read them to me. Please.”

I do as I’m told, like usual, but I am shaking, nervous, choking on my spelling errors. She sits quietly through one, then another, and another, pretty soon we are close to the end of the notebook. I feel good now, I pause for emphasis at the end of lines and glance up occasionally to see her face. I’ve never read my poetry out loud before, I was always too self-conscious. During one endoftheline pause I stole a peak at her over the edge of the page and there were tears in her eyes. 

At the end she sniffed, “Is that one about Katie?”

I nod, “Yea.”

“It sucks. . . What she did to you I mean.”

I blink. What she did to me? “Huh?”

“I mean you dated for four years and she just left. That sucks.” 

I’d never thought about it like that, I guess. I listened to that cd every time Olivia wasn’t around for the next three weeks. I thought if I heard it enough, it would stop hurting, but the tension in my chest was always the same when the first chords hit me and I was always in tears by the end of the first chorus. Maybe it was sucky that she left, but that didn’t change anything. Katie didn’t love me, because I wasn’t good enough. 

I cracked that cd in half. 

We made a habit of it after that. Bored of television, weak and tired, Olivia would make me read to her from my journal, almost once a week. And I did, although it was never less embarrassing and awkward than it had been that first time.

“Dear past Jimmy,

I know you spent the night on the floor of your bathroom crying and trying to get up the guts to slit your wrists with the flimsy razor blade you pried out of that cheesy box cutter you found out in the garage earlier. Funny, I don’t remember what was going through your head. Funny, just about all I remember is that it was the night of the homecoming game, and the way the light in the bathroom shuddered all night long and David pounding on the door at eight o’clock to tell me he had to piss. 

I know tonight feels like the end of everything. I know you’re a loser. I know you hurt in places that didn’t even exist until tonight. But I wanted to tell you that six years from now you will still be alive. Six years from now a blonde girl with big, blue eyes and the devil’s long, long legs is going to hold your hand and make the whole world stand still, and things will still hurt, but hurting will be okay because she will make all the bullshit worth it.”

When I look up Olivia’s mouth is hanging open. My whole face feels hot and I passionately wish I could take back every word I have just said. Sometimes Olivia is so good at pretending to be heartless I forget she is soft inside. “Yea, I was a really dramatic teenager. Aren’t you glad I grew out of that?” I manage a shaky, jolted laugh. 

Her eyes fill up with tears and she wraps her arms around my waist. I put a hand on her back, afraid to acknowledge her tears. “I love you, Jimmy.” Her voice is soft and trembling and I am robbed of all ability. I sit, fixed dumbly in place.

 After a long time she sits back on her heels and looks at me, eyes dry. “That felt good.” She says.

“Did it?” I stammer, still a little bewildered.

She nods, “I feel. . . I don’t know, empty. I like it. It’s kind of like after I do yoga.”

“Well, we should do this more often, then.” I pull her into my arms and she breathes a sigh so enormous that I can feel it stir the hairs on my arm. 

After that Olivia cried a lot, but only when I was around. She treated her sadness like it was a monster, and if she got too close when I wasn’t there to protect her it would swallow her whole. I hated to see her cry, but I loved it when the storm finally passed, and she collapsed against me breathing into one or two more straggling sobs before finally falling silent.