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We'll Never Learn

from Accepting the Facts by Julia Alexander

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lyrics

Some point after falling out of love
and admitting that I did.
He said, “I hate this song.”
And I said nothing because I do not hear the music yet.
But then he dropped the needle
and set my record spinning
and I heard it.
I heard it.
He and I sat on my bedroom floor. We listened to a song
I was so familiar with, I could have written it myself.
The sound pulsed through my veins,
and I closed my eyes to feel music course through my body.
We both left the needle down and watched the record spin
long after the album was over, and just listened to the crackling at the end.

When he stopped calling,
I left messages on his machine
he just never heard them I guess.
He just never listened right.
He came back around spinning records in my bedroom,
but we both knew it wasn’t the same.
It seemed like we only ever listened to the crackling at the end.
He asked questions I didn’t want to answer.
The answers were never the reasons he was asking anyway.

I said I loved him
because I did not know how to be alone.
I did not know how to live my life
without him in it.
I was saying I loved him
because I thought it would fix everything.
It was a rope I could grab on to,
when I was dangling off cliff.
I loved him like an apology. I never did anything right.
I loved him, and it ruined both of us
because that was not love.
That was injustice.
I poured everything into him and
got nothing back.
I wallpapered my heart with his picture.
I never asked for anything back.
There are pieces of me that would be better off
taking deep breaths at the bottom of a swimming pool,
and he found them.
He found them, and he brought them back to life
all the things I thought I drowned
came back to spit water in my face.

I can’t let it go.
Years later, I cannot let it go because
I’m still here spinning records on my own,
and he is not,
and that has to mean either something gigantic
or nothing at all.
I am still here.
He is not.
I cannot let it go.
I cannot let it go.
I cannot let him go.
Please don’t make me let him go.

We grew to hate the same songs.
I sing them alone in my bedroom.
I still leave voicemails.
I’m still sure he has not heard them.

credits

from Accepting the Facts, released November 1, 2013

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Julia Alexander Connecticut

I'm a part time poet and a full time cry baby. If you get too close to me, I'll write a really emotionally confusing poem about you. It'll be exhausting for both of us.

To contact Julia for inquires of all sorts e-mail juliaalexanderpoetry@gmail.com
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