You make me want to write. Nice things. The endearing parts. Like how maybe “the dream” isn’t the music or the band or the touring or the fame. It’s building a home yourself and having an attached greenhouse and misty days living somewhere beautiful where every picture turns out great, and you’re 35, and your metabolism has caught up with you, and your beard is finally coming in. How beautiful. You ask me what my plan is. I respond, “Does anyone know, really?” You tell me about a plant that you’ve had for 15 years that refuses to die on you. I tell you that it lives to teach you how to take care of something so green, so vibrant. Like you. But it’s different now. I’ve always admired you. I always will. But for some reason today you became someone just a little more real to me. Like filling in the details on napkin drawings. “That’s his bellybutton.” We laugh. I tell you I liked your singing. When I get into your car, my favorite song is already playing. You say, “Here, let me start it over for you,” and you do. This is what you are to me. A favorite song already playing. A starting over to listen to the best parts. You have so many best parts. You say, “I want to show you this song,” say, “Tell me what you think of this one,” and sometimes I can’t tell the difference between you and “the good ones.” Do you know that you’re a good one? It’s great. I like the way you hold pens. I like it when you laugh hard. It’s also one of my favorite songs. I don’t mind anything with you. I don’t mind anything about you. How lovely. How rare. I like being quiet with you. I like seeing your practice space. I liked all those graffiti dicks on the wall. I had nearly forgotten that you spilled my tea on me. You fucking shit. I saw you take all those napkins. I saw you see me looking at all those old computers and telephones and foreign newspapers in the storefront window. I ask, “What even is this place?” You say, “It must be a museum. You can probably find anything you’ve ever wanted in there.” Say, “I wonder if that computer’s haunted.” Say, “I wonder how people felt about all this shit back then.” I liked that you pulled a box of pop tarts out from under your driver’s seat and said, “Oh! Poptarts!” You offer me one and say, “They’re the cinnamon brown sugar kind!” You are sweet.
