For one day I would be that song I can’t stop playing.
I’d let the notes rush like subway stations but hover like winter
because I hate when the melody ends.
I would be the dictionary’s millions of words,
rolling off my tongue giving their first impressions
as I meet the world’s billion inhabitants who’ve never known my name.
I would be the zero seconds in Times Square on New Years Eve,
right after one thousand palms are thrown upward to the glowing sky but right before one thousand lips can finally stop waiting to touch.
I’d trade my test questions for converse high tops
and pimples for your last piece of gum.
My dry winter hands would tan in the sun and the ability
to listen to music wouldn’t mean dollar signs.
I’d be throwing snowballs with my best friend.
I’d write my grandmother a letter, longhand.
My parents would again learn the pain of unexpected heartbreak
and I’d be standing arm in arm with my sister smiling in her prom dress, before she started looking more like a hips and less like training bras.
Now the bras belong to me
but for one day I’d take it all back to reading a book a day, when boys meant a department in Nordstrom’s, and it wasn’t only my parents decorating my Christmas tree.
That’d be one day. The rest would be as I am now,
sitting, typing, listening to that song I can’t stop playing.