Contributor Series 9: If Men Had Ears
Mix Tape
By Andrea Lani
Twenty-two songs–sixteen years asleep, lost
on a Greyhound bus–wake something up
in me, pulse through my earbuds from my work
computer just as our bodies pulsed on the dance
floor that night, that one night that inspired you
to mix a tape to hand off in the gloomy early
morning light of a bus station, the tape I listened
to on my Sony Walkman, forehead pressed
to glass, watching cornfields blur by, until I changed
buses in Ohio and the tape stayed behind.
(They say a mix tape is a mating call, like the grouse drumming his log outside my window every morning.)
Today, your lost songs–resurrected in iTunes–hum my skin alive; today, anchored in my swivel
chair, sixteen years too late, I hear your call.
Andrea Lani’s most recent poem to appear here was Capture (January 2010).
The remembrance of what could have been is powerful.
I love this! Oh, the memories!