You probably don't want to let your eyelids fall
in order to keep this feeling,
flashes of velveteen voices, soft and slow,
drowsy on the edge of dreams,
fleeting and forever at the same time,
the kind of night that lasts eternities and doesn't happen at all...
Were you laughing or crying? No one could tell.
You hum when you're tired
and the tune echoes through everyone's bones,
causing an ache so deep that it seems to be more inside of yourself
than something you can feel.
It's not always good but it always means something,
Enjoy what you're reading?
Signup for our newsletter
so isn't that some sort of consolation?
Little towns, party towns, middle-of-nowhere towns,
where growing up just means you can walk around later than you used to,
when you and your friends spend summer,
thighs shellacked to the swing set in cutoff jeans,
never sleeping, limbs splayed 'cross each others' with hands in your hair.
Intimacy creeps in and avoids the creaky porch steps,
avoids how the screen door waivers in the storm, keeps slamming with a
Bang
Bang
Bang
wraps tendrils of nostalgia around your neck and into your lungs...
Yeah baby, these are the nights you'll always remember.
This is where your body is gonna rest someday,
under the unkept crunchy grass,
and you might try to leave it but it's never gonna leave you.
Dirt under your nails and a hand in her back pocket,
she was pretty and you didn't know what that meant yet.
Shutting your eyelids means saying goodbye to all of this,
and that thought is comforting and terrifying at the same time.
You're just woozy in the backseat of the car,
singing along with the radio and swaying to the beat,
and just before you can't remember, you think that maybe this could be what life's supposed to be.