(all the random flashes) someone’s long hair flowing to the album you haven’t yet heard before almost asleep lying on the green grass I can almost imagine. you look up through the translucent fabric of the young tree you lean on into the depths of the blue sky that shrouds the edge of the brick high school just out of view. the seniors lie around you talking or humming making a face to the lens in a month you're the senior and they’re off to college but that’ll be a dream for another time. looking back at you wondering what it’s like to be you or to be me looking back wondering what it’s like to be you or to be me you’ll stay under that tree watching the world stand as still as time in that precarious frozen moment, even when you’re a senior thinking back a year when everyone around you hadn’t yet graduated. you walk taking in not your familiar surroundings but rather that spring day a year earlier, as alive as that tree and as real as you were. *instrumental* from college I think back to that walk when my home still was the city you knew for years. sometimes it’s hard to believe that once you weren’t just someone I looked back on looking back at you wondering what it’s like to be you or to be me somehow you were my reality if each moment is a prototype for the next then the friends that - you knew were early drafts for - who I know now. the series of afternoons from that spring are days that don’t exist except in screenshots and memories inside of memories, the lucid emotions of listening to the strokes and staring up into the canopy at your high school with my eyes shut.

I wonder what it meant When I place my head Onto the shoulder Next to yours Our last year on a school bus I’m two inches from your face Wondering who we’ll be By the time we get off Four years nearly at its close Everything is the last Innocent days in the art room When I was only just meeting you We reminisce about the future Improvising our foundation Words we said became mutual plans Lucid speculation All the random flashes left Over from another world That mean nothing Without the context They bring alive As they fade Into disparate Memories like the years When you were more than a Name I used to say I want to know if you Remember that feeling I want to know if you Ever knew it at all When I just wanted to keep My head on your shoulder Late night walks through city streets Fuzzy lamps on facetime Earbuds shared for our Barely known songs Empty seats dot the train car With orange and yellow All the stories we’d write Riding from the end of the 1 line We skipped the part where We got to know each other Cuz we were running low on time To know each other All the random flashes left over From another world My head’s resting on The shoulder next to your head All the random flashes left Over from another world That mean nothing Without the context They bring alive As they fade Into disparate Memories like the years When you were more than a Name I used to say I want to know if you Remember that feeling I want to know if you Ever knew it at all When I just wanted to keep My head on your shoulder Can you still remember Who I used to be Before you became Someone I once knew Can I still remember Who I used to be Before we became Friends we once knew Can you still remember Who I used to be Before you became Someone I once knew Can I still remember Who I used to be Before we became Friends we once knew

I hear the disappointment In your voice now A friend respects, I’ve let you down I don’t deserve your time or your energy I can apologize I can promise you But that won’t change the past Everything been done everything been felt I need to be aware I need to know myself Just a lesson for me But an experience for you I say I’ve tried to be aware I say even though I’ve failed I see how now I’m one of them Who I’ve let myself become… I’ll never feel it I’ll just make it worse I’ll never feel it I’ll just make it worse I’ll never feel it I’ll just make it worse I’ll never feel it You keep me accountable Life goes on and you remember I must remember, must hold to this Use it lest I repeat this I don’t even know what’s needed to heal I’ll never feel how I made you feel I just know how I could ignore this I could just forget, live on and rest Frankly sometimes I wish I had selective memory But I couldn’t leave you to bear this all alone I need to burn this memory in Else I’m still the me who was scarring But regardless I realize I still am A promise to you is a promise to myself Now with a hope one day I’ll be someone With whom you’d wanna share a conversation I’ll never feel it I’ve just made it worse I’ll never feel it

Next to the stone wall Hexagons sidewalks under my feet I’m looking through trees opposite the street At children playing, couples talking, someone feeding sparrows Benches are full with people so oblivious To all the thoughts flying at me in my head Now I’m alone my head’s at peace Like everyone all around me The setting sun at Riverside Park Strips down racing minds I turn off the street into the park Sunlight bouncing off the river Is gold patterns On the asphalt I’m running steadily, thoughts fade away On a blank path for a blank mind With sounds of the New York City streets Backlighting the summer leaves My world is breathing in and staring at the passing trees Consumed by running Don’t know what anyone’s thinking anymore And I’m thankful that I’m barely thinking anymore I’m out here cause I wanna be out here Not because there was nothing else Or no one else, responding to read messages And I couldn’t take it alone in my room I needed to be out here where my mind fades And the city’s green keeps me sane Running down a promenade, Hudson River at my side The dusk is striped with lavender, the sun’s half gone now I watch the orange light slip under New Jersey With all the strangers from my city Seeing the same river, the same buildings, the same history As Paul Simon, as Lou Reed Playing Interpol or The Strokes Where I grew up listening to Is This It The bright lights turn on, and the GW twinkles It’s so different from winter, or worse, March When the world is black and white with a taunting blue sky But now it’s in color, summer twilight leaves fading into Lights from the buildings are the stars in the skyline Sodium vapor lamps Twinkle along the paths And dance along the Hudson As I turn my back to Riverside Heading to my apartment, but I’m already walking through my home

Do they like you? They don’t want you Are you oblivious When everything falls through Staring at, dreaming Oxytocin Your lens a pane Of glass closing in Your eyes lay on Red green blue Their silhouettes You can see them without you Now you’re self produced Your air alone you breath There’s no one here And there’s nothing to leave You reel it in You seal it up You’re airtight Airtight What you’d give To remain in sight But you’re alright Airtight You reel it in You seal it up You’re airtight Airtight What you’d give To remain in sight But you’re alright Airtight You are talking You are dancing You laugh and cry But you’re mind's airtight The propaganda won't die You reel it in You seal it up You’re airtight Alright You reel you in You seal you up You’re airtight Alright What you’d give to remain To remain in sight But you’ve made yourself Airtight You used to get an Immediate response Now you wait a day To be left read once If they don’t reach out Then you don’t seek out Don’t go for the unknown And then have to eek out Ghosthood is a process Adding translucent walls One by one until there’s no one to See your calls You don’t know Why you feel so mute But you claim it as yourself And now you’re resolute Alright Alright Alright Airtight Airtight

Walking through the twilight Of a murky royal sky Under a tide of branches, City streets are invisible Past the waves of dusk As the raw evening washes Over Central Park’s fading sun. I float forward and I can almost see Through my watery eyes, The fading path in front of me. I press music into my ears A soundtrack to distract the tears From the inaudible world beyond. Thoughts begin to flood my mind And the park around me fades away Into memories of all of you When I tagged along and kept at bay. Welcomed only at my request I said you were the friends I knew best But I can’t just keep following you Expressions that I know are fake The smiles when I enter Because when I’m with you All I am is there As someone you’ve barely known Whose awkward comments fill the room What should I assume of you I’ll be here until you call On this path, on my own This park’s my mind, my ocean And I must dive down alone. At the bottom I can be alright I’ll be free and I’ll be airtight And now I break away Now you won’t need to bother With that smile looking so honest My mind says I’m a fool To fall for your feigned interest I’ll be in my airtight bubble Until you tell me what’s real Until I hear you knocking for me *breath* Oh Stella the diver I’ll dive down like you I’m airtight I broke away And I’m alright You’re my famous prophet Oh why’d they tell me to come In the first place? I was always Just following Why was I Always following Why couldn’t I build the connections Where were their texts Asking for me? Where were the replies Wanting to come with me? I was too desperate For attention To keep the promises I made to myself I was out there waiting Waiting Waiting The other day I I took a walk Beautiful grey waves Of fog kept me company No one else free to come Not today, not last week Not for this or anything else I’ve been waiting for too long And now I’ve finally got out I walked through streets and down gorges No one’s with me But I’m alright They say I go on walks a lot Dark thoughts and pretty lights I could never go do it Couldn’t do that to my parents The sky is so pretty That’s all I will think about The night sky is so pretty Memories flashing Like faces in the sand On the ocean floor I’m on the ocean floor Oh Stella Oh Stella For once I see The contradictions In my mind What if I don’t Let myself Feel how it Wants to feel

We both think We’re more than we are But how do we keep What we never made Wish we had to burn it down Cuz then it would have been there You tried to take me there Where I was too shy to go Waiting, waiting, waiting for you Waiting for just like last time Waiting, like how you wait for me But I’m still waiting Waiting, waiting, waiting for you Waiting, for just like last time Waiting, not reciprocating Too shy to say what we both know You’re into me And I’m into you You’ve had experience But this was my first kiss A moment in a stairwell But a smile for hours A promise for another That we don’t keep So many moments So close, so close I don’t know yet that you’ll become The one who got away You’re a year ahead and You’re moving on to college We’ve been such close friends Waiting, waiting, waiting for you Waiting, for another last time Waiting, now it’s my turn I’ll wait for another Moment waiting for you Waiting, it’s my last time Waiting, now we’ve become Flashes in someone’s memory