something more

sunlight is coming through the window, soft
just grazing my fingers on loud keys
that i swear everyone can hear today
and i’m listening to sad songs on repeat
because i couldn’t stand anything else right now

(this one reminds me of some long ago july 4th,
riding in the back of someone’s car after
sitting around a parking lot in
fitchburg, watching the fireworks
from a distance)

there is an unfamiliar, entirely
unsettling change in the air recently
it’s not just the feeling of being a year older,
or of going to yet another school,
this is different, this is

everything changing all at once
this is the frightening prospect of the one
person i care most about leaving me for
something better, this is me following because i’m
desperately afraid of being left behind

and because i have no particular dream
of my own

(this song is driving on a shining, wet night in
summer, all gloss and reflected stars
scattered on the pavement, coasting too fast
down winding back roads in groton,
substituting longing echoes of guitar and a

steady beat for streetlights
this is the thick melancholy that i drink up
sometimes, that i’ve been living off of
in the absence of something more
substantial)