brave teenager (goodbye from the person who loved you)

It's gonna take a while for my clothes to dry

Maybe by then I'll get to be with you

Another night in this room 

Bright glowing rectangles keep me up

It's like magic I like to pretend

Our love, you and I

I turn the volume up real high 

I can't sleep well without hearing you 

We'll tap our noses and squeeze hands

And will you keep your face covered and hidden still?

I want us to see each other

Our faces and our bodies

Wearing pretty clothes

Or nothing at all

I want to grow old together even if our odds aren't convincing

And I think you should learn your bass guitar

So we can keep us in rhythm, we could start a band

I want to strum until my fingers are tender and sore

So I can feel it better when you squeeze my hand

We can live in a house

Or in a one bedroom apartment 

Or in a tent

Cause home is when I'm together with you

You rustle the sheets sleeping and the microphone picks it up sometimes

It's like I can feel you move and we're sleeping side by side 

I hope on the nights we're together I can't sleep a wink

Because I want to feel every second I'm with you

I started writing this when I was drying my clothes

And had nothing better to do

Except think about you

When I get to be with you

My clothes will be dry 

And I'll give my shirt to you

I'm not very good at this poetry or songwriting thing

I'm not very good at converting my feelings into the abstract because I'm too insecure to let it sound silly

I can think of other people's, greater artists and people's words and create at least surface level simulacra of their words

I can recite John Darnielle like gospel

I can sing-along drunk to the words of Jeff Rosenstock

I can cry every time I think of the story of Umineko

But I don't have much words, much lived experience, much of anything that I can say that's my own

I don't think I'll ever be a great artist or make something substantial

But my feelings for you are my own and mine alone

///

Written in 2020

I tried to write you something new

To bid you farewell

I wrote three lines of "brave dreamer"

But instead I dug up the shallow grave of my teenage self

To ask him how to say goodbye

And how to move on

So this is my farewell from him

And this is my farewell from me

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye

And thank you, forever and ever, Vivian