Stop this Train, John Mayer
➢ I’m not just good at being young– I have been riding the middle for ten years now.
➢ I saw my parents’ go.
➢ Sometimes, I can’t take the speed or the slow.
Seventeen Seconds, The Cure
➢ I am an empty nester now and everything is quieter. My youngest of three is twenty-one.
➢ I am always cold. [Picture me in a blue comforter listening to Alexa.]
➢ I’m obsessed with time slipping— Or is every second out there already?
Stay, Stay, Stay, Taylor Swift
➢ I have been ghosted twice. They were two of my closest friends.
➢ I hold grudges and write about them too.
➢ I never want anything to end. I have been married for thirty-two years.
Creep, Radiohead
➢ I want to have control.
➢ I wonder what I am doing here.
➢ I want my skin to make someone cry.
Living in the Moment, Jason Mraz
➢ I never let the past go past.
➢ My brain is not wired for easy and breezy. I have missed many presents—
➢ I prefer the memory, not the moment.
Time, Pink Floyd
➢ The sun is the same in a relative way. Seen it rise on my commute for thirty years.
➢ The poem is over in another line or two.
➢ Hope I will have something more to say— when this track ends.
Victoria Nordlund's poetry collection Wine-Dark Sea was published by Main Street Rag in 2020. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize Nominee, whose work has appeared in PANK Magazine, Rust+Moth, Chestnut Review, Pidgeonholes, and elsewhere. Visit her at VictoriaNordlund.com
