Nine Years Is Not That Long

I played it in the car and made it to the third song

before I realized I didn't know why I'd loved her.

The playlist said 2015. My phone confirmed it:

2015. Nine years.

The song had a drop that I apparently once found meaningful—

some synthetic swell that now just sounds

like every other attempt at depth.

Like I was trying so hard

to feel something that sounded like feeling.

I knew exactly who I was when I made this list.

She was twenty-five. She thought music could save her.

She cried in cars. She wrote the date on the song titles

like they were evidence of something real.

The song is still the same.

She's not.

I couldn't even make it to the chorus

without cringing at the version of me

who thought this mattered,

who thought melancholy and meaning

were the same thing.

I skipped forward.

I skipped everything.

And now whenever I hear the opening notes,

I feel her—that old self, that embarrassing self—

reaching toward me from nine years ago,

and I have to turn it off

because seeing her like that,

desperate and believing,

feels too much like watching

someone you used to be

die in real time,

which is exactly what's happening,

which is exactly what I can't forgive.