Band of Horses

The percussion—one, two, three beats—kicks the song off, and the hotness of tears rush up my face to my eyes with the swell of the violin intro. A shiver runs up my back and I’m transported in an instant. I don’t need to close my eyes; I am there.

            I am walking up the rounded, grassy hill of Jiffy Lube Live, my head feels light from the beers we drank and the pot we smoked in the parking lot. My head feels light because I am going to be sick in the hospital in a few weeks too, but I don’t know it yet. What I know is that I’m giddy and smiling with all my teeth and holding hands with a boy, the kind of boy I spent wishing for when I was 14 and awkward. The hill seems massive and impossible, especially after the stairs we had to climb from the parking lot. In my memory the air is hot and pressing even though the air of May is rarely so. In my mind I am wearing shorts and a t-shirt but it’s probably too cold for that. I feel the hill lapping away at my energy with each step, leaving my body, weak already and becoming weaker by the day, panting and tingly from the climb.

            We meet the crest of the hill, and the music hits us. I’ve never heard it before but it’s already the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard, and I trip just a little bit on the thick grass. I trip enough that he goes to catch me so that we end up twisting together and around, kissing and forgetting about balance and equilibrium. It was the most perfect I had ever felt; I was in love. I was a time bomb. Two, three days until I go off and blast myself into the unknown place where you float in between alive and dead.

            My cheeks are streaked wet as the song plays to the end.