Soundtrack

We could buy a radio.

Do you feel the same way I do when you listen?

I listen and I've just said goodbye to the home where everything worth remembering from my childhood had happened. I close my eyes and I'm back in that elevator, stuffed full of furniture, then down the hallway of the shitbox apartment. I breathe in and smell the melange from every other identical door in the hallway. I breathe out and wonder whether it's the apartment itself, exhaling the lives from twenty-odd years of first-generation families. I remember closing the front door for the last time and saying farewell not to brick and mortar, but to a life I had.

Does it hit you the same way it does me?

I still remember the way I felt when I listen fingers running through hair. Breath on the back of the neck. Long after the name has faded away, I still remember the basement, the single lamp dimmed, the clock creeping closer to midnight. I remember waiting for midnight. I remember the wait for the right time to say goodbye.

When it plays, are you back again, at the first time?

I close my eyes and I feel the movements inside my body, still. The twists in the arm, the shifts in weight, the twirls pushing further away, the pulls bringing in closer. I can't see the crowd – that there was one, sure – but every smile, every whisper? When Sinatra plays, how could I ever forget?

So I wonder if you, like me, listen not to forget, but to remember.

Not to sink, but to float.

Not to leave, but to return.