I & Iaw. a familiar story…

zvada:

I took the train home to my parent’s house in the country, and on the way I listened to the entire Bright Eyes’ discography. It was the first time I really connected to the newest album, and I remember listening to One for You, One for Me, and really digging it, really understanding when he sings about “I and I.” I watched a flatbed semi truck stacked high with cut logs blaze past us on the highway, and I remember noting how big the tree trunks were, and how close. Everything was connected. I texted back and forth with Stephen, who was in Seattle at the time, and mostly wondered when the pain of getting clean would hit. Strangely enough, I don’t remember any pain at all in the days that followed. I remember the high waisted jean shorts that I lived in, and the pink flowered head scarf which held back my bleached hair. I remember having enough energy to jump on the trampoline with Matthias, and how he taught me how to do a somersault. I remember the way the bones in my back pushed themselves out against my skin, and the way I felt them roll against the rough wood of the front porch swing. Rachel and I sat out back in the lawn chairs and tears slid down my cheeks as I told her of my caged heart and the way I felt I was impossible to love. Those conversations always seem so necessary but more often than not we end in laughter, and that night followed the usual suit, as we screamed in almost hysterics that we must be the only two beings on earth without souls. What pity we had for men who loved us. I remember that week because it was the only week I’ve ever made arrangements to stay longer with my family at home. I remember that week because I let my blood become clean, tossed and turned through the aches in my legs and did not sleep but instead found solace in the voice of my favourite singer/songwriter. I remember that week because time seemed to slip away, and the day before I had to come back to the city, I found myself downtown Cleveland, running around the lakeshore in the shimmery heat. It was August, and hotter than ever, and somehow we’d managed to score tickets to a popup Bright Eyes show at the House of Blues. There were clandestine joints rolled in paper which we hid in our cigarette packs, and liquor that we stashed in the waistbands of our denim. I’ve tried to write about that show more than once, and I always end up paused, hung up on one singular image. It was near the end of the show and I’d pushed my way to the front of the crowd, alone. Covered in a sheen of sweat and thirsty with glassy eyes, I had completely forgotten my physical self. Conor was singing One for You and I reached my hands up along with a hundred other kids; some sort of plea. I remember his eyes, and I remember the way they looked as he yelled into us, Are you ready?! There was only one answer to be given, and before we knew it, he was sailing over us, all tattered jeans and beat up Vans sneakers. The glory of it. There was the weight of his physical body and the lightness of the entire week, the noise and the rhythm and the giddy power of being entirely alone, and I was baptized there, in the heat. I was rinsed clean and given something, something that remains nameless but continues to beat under my breastbone, renewing me and keeping me pure.

~anonymous