When I listen to Don Broco
somehow I remember you there,
standing shirtless in the crowd,
black straps underneath your blonde
hair, your solidity before me, backlit
by the opening band. But you weren’t
there. We didn’t meet until a few weeks
later. In the days in between I layered on
black lipstick and drove down the back roads
of Lexington to the arboretum to take
polaroids with Meghan and Elliot.
We threw our hair up to make it look
windswept, a lie; the air was sticky then,
but we cut through it like it was silk,
the car windows down, blasting T shirt song
from the aux. You never made it that far
with us. And yet, somehow, I think a little
bit of you will always haunt me. We were young
and as in love as two nineteen year olds
could be. The whole story reeks of cliche
and yet I continue to tell it. The days after,
I sat in the passenger seat of my fathers car
as he drove me up to campus, my earbuds in,
as if I could drown out all the buzzing
with these nihilism songs, and for a while
I did, cementing your sound track into
the depths of my forgotten aesthetic.
But no: you weren’t there. You wore the
t shirt we bought at the concert
until you didn’t. You never listened
to the playlist. Shit, we met when
I wasn’t even a teenager anymore.
But I put on the same
songs and somehow your shape
appears in the foreground, gravel in
the grooves of your boots, towering
over this new version of me who
no longer cares if the poetry is any good.