One evening, halfway down the wide street,
I declared (to no one)
I hated jazz.
To quiet my sobbing over his death, my legs carried me outside
into the hour where gold thinned beneath blue.
we loved the cusp of winter, when the enormous sun whitens
and the air proves you are alive.
But tonight, I was instead stung by November’s hands
and reminded that this–
this was just the end of fall.
I approached the moving crowds, and black shapes turned into coats
coats that held carefree careless, smiling people.
‘They look stupid that way’, I huffed to myself, shifting uncomfortably in my own clothes.
As if the people around me weren’t bothersome enough,
there they were.
Floating through sharp air–
those notes.
I hated how they moved.
They stumbled down the evening road,
limbs flailing how they wished
like a friend.
With a saxophone throat, he said: “What if we’re all idiots, and animals can actually hear us?”,,
perfectly spilling words all over the place.
The jazz was an animal that messed with me alone,
laughing, open mouthed, at how alive every body was
every body but him.
I weaved through the crowds, stomping over the forgetful coat-wearers’ spirits.
My horrible footsteps were too loud for me to notice
that the crowds thinned
and the notes slowed, draaagging along the pavement.
Standing ahead was a slice of street light. I ceased my assault of the pavement, letting my head hang back.
On the wide, empty street, the only beings left were weary notes
and an angry girl.
“I feel my life.. ending, you know?”, the saxophone said with a thick throat, shakily setting the words down.
I let hot tears silently hit the ground, quietly hating everything.
The sunset, because even the morning’s return was promised.
The people, their stupid happiness and coats,
and their music.
But as I stood– a raging, fiery thing– inside the dark, the jazz waited with me. Wept with me.
It was the exact
same
song.
On the return home,
I treaded lighter with grief and music at either side.
Two enormous, beating beings
who share love as their lifeblood.