Cycle

i. And I can't quite understand why we don't have all these millions of flawless, uncracked words to describe when we miss something. I mean of course we have nostalgia. And we have homesickness, too. Except you only use that when you're stuck in Germany, hands clasped over your eyes and eyes darting urgently after those firebursts you can never place or pause or see, exactly. Even then it seems strained. Even then it all seems so strained and strict and trite and tired.

ii. I used to listen to 'All of A Sudden I Miss Everyone' every single goddamn night. Fall asleep to it. No words-- I love them, so unbelievably pretentious about how much they mean to me; yet there I was every night, instrumental instrumental, fundamental instrumental oh my goodness in my ears and fingertips, sparking, splitting atoms and my head and still it did not ache. Still I did not ache. Never have I ever come across anything so beautiful (your jawline and voice aside), and that is what it means to miss something. That is what it means to miss something: when your iPod is broken and your skin is cracking with December and sweaters and ankle boots. And then summer comes and you love the heat but want the fall. Love the sun, still, Mesa dust in your chipping, bleeding teeth. How many times, dear, have you seen blinking, cursing PHX in blocked and digital letters above your pretty head? How many times. And how many times have you felt the need to tear yourself a little, tragic bit away from whatever it is you love in order to grow closer to something else? That is the cycle. I'm sure I've talked of that before. But that album, that perfect disc that I would implant in my skull if possible -- you can't know. And therefore how can you miss anything...

iii. Can't you, though? Can't you hurt for things that are not yours, play the music you didn't build and hold the hands of persons you've just met? Whenever I check the weather it screams POLLEN FORECAST FOR YOUR AREA IS VERY HIGH. And I laugh and can't grasp why that matters. We coat our lungs with so much. They can't miss being clean. You can't miss breathing if it means more not to. I wonder if warm air is a sort of seduction method, a sort of sedation, drug for our running, leaping thoughts. People are so happy in the summer. Or they are miserable. It's always one or the other, I've found. Always one or the other.

iv. So I don't know what this is, really. But I miss you and I don't know you. Mostly I miss the things I never knew. The things that were out of my reach, I mean. And I think that explains a lot-- a tragic, singing, spinning lot.