“I was supposed to be sent away but they forgot to come and get me
I was a functioning alcoholic ‘til nobody noticed my new aesthetic
All of this to say I hope you’re okay, but you’re the reason
And no one here’s to blame but what about your quiet treason…”
— Taylor Swift, “Fortnight”
there comes a day when you say goodbye,
in deceptive stages,
my friend jimmy would laugh, “we fooled ‘em again,” after every sold-out show,
this one-year anniversary of the day I stepped down reminds me of him in a strange way, the old man slouched on my grandfather’s bridgeport couch in the dark, tv on, praying for five minutes where he loses consciousness, if for nothing else but to simply forget he was once too busy to rest
you are now a footnote in someone else’s charade, as they earnestly convince themselves this tired show will last forever, and they will make a difference, and in the deepest, darkest of nights, they are what this thankless world needed all along
I see her now in the crown with the roses, manicured nails, manicured lawn, just a few blocks from million-dollar puget sound views, with her headlines and her shorthand cures, and I hear the penn cove mussels are a vibeeeee
she is everything they ever wanted, the queen of edmonds, light and breezy, with a steely-eyed, dead-fish gaze that always reminds me of cold autumn waves and dirty sand, where my three-year-old son buried his hot wheels, searching the skyline for a friendly getaway, anyway to get away from me
she must’ve been mean in another life
I still see residues crippling gently beneath her softening smile, as if by will, and careful, if grating kindergarten teacher delivery, rolling every consonant, skipping over vowels, pretending to be a meadow so hard
the people love her
they always love a queen who speaks their language, that secret code of the manufactured elite, before a time when four-lane roads were dirt and weeds so thick they cut your knees
she’s clean and she’s coherent,
and she’s been waiting so patiently
to step over me
what it took to get her here, and me over there, ah, now that’s the quiet part out loud
I was her mistake, the night she ran away,
now it’s the morning after, her friends are telling her to kill me, but she can’t remember the man who raped her or the drink he paid for in the long, dark, twisted hallway toward his nubile bliss.
I was supposed to live in a home with bars for windows and scheduled jell-o with fish sticks, mondays are for art, wednesday’s therapy, and friday is free to watch hawks kill their prey just outside her dirty hobbit hole, not here writing on deadline, interviewing governors and retired yakusa, squeezing round pegs into square holes, and calling it a kind of poetry you could bottle and sell to the group discount tourists.
I am no taylor swift.
Great Carol. Rhythm and depth.