| It’s funny how all those things you never wanted to remember,
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| blocked out and you turned your back on in the name of moving on,
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| they come back to you on January nights.
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| You realize the reason you’ve been drinking alone,
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| the reason you’ve been letting the silent passive disarray creep in,
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| the reason you stopped writing, stopped reading, stopped sleeping,
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| stopped loving is because there was never a step forward
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| or even an honest gaze towards the setting sun following the Ohio river,
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| running steadily towards Missouri.
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| And something comes along, it comes along and you expect it,
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| but you didn’t know it could inhabit such a form such a sleek soft skin.
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| But nonetheless, it’s there in your bed, a Tuesday morning in early December
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| and you get to thinking, don’t you?
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| All of a sudden, you’re retracing that final conversation
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| before she moved to California and then the two weeks later
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| when you caught her out of the corner of your eye from your barstool.
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| There was a shot of old granddad in front of you
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| before you could even pull out your wallet.
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| You’re piecing together the swigs of W.L. |
| Weller
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| in the bucket seats of the van, a parking lot of some old bowling alley.
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| There are a hundred or so people in the basement
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| waiting for you to play songs that mean nothing to you,
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| at least in the context of a face.
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| You’ve invited this blonde model, you wonder if she’ll show
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| so you keep pulling on the bottle and wait to see what happens.
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| Turns out she does, but so do the last three girls you recall
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| saying «I love you» to, and they all want a piece of you.
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| So it’s a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon from the bar
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| and falling into the drum set and can’t you see all this time it was all too
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| much?
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| Just 21 and so empty, so fucking tired, so worried about nothing.
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| Dad phoned the next day, said to stop drinking. |
| He wasn’t even there.
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| You’re picturing moving out of that Chestnut Street apartment,
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| in all its ragged rooftop beer glory, in all its mistaken nakedness.
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| You moved the bed because you couldn’t sleep in that corner any more
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| after you realized you weren’t in control.
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| Never did call the landlord after the door was kicked in in December.
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| Held a vendetta against squirrels after noticing the grey tails finding winter
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| refuge above the ceiling tiles.
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| When you were putting the finishing touches on a move out destined to cost
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| you a full unreturned deposit, the power was shut off while you were vacuuming,
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| you laughed and got the fuck out of there forever.
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| «But here we are» she says. |