1.
My parents’ song is “Que Tontos Que Locos,” a bachata about two lovers who keep seeing other people but really just want each other. How stupid we are, how crazy. That’s not my parents’ story but the rhythm attached itself to it anyway, like when a cat sinks into your legs in the middle of the night, or a leaf settles into your hair and you don’t notice until someone looks at you hard enough and says, “Can I get that?” and then, for a moment, you are touching.
2.
When I look at You, a song gets stuck in my head.
3.
Our bodies are not the same
as they were ten years ago because cells divide
and science, whatever, yada yada.
The only parts of us that remain the same are the hair in our ears.
I learned this from a movie. Does it matter which one it is?
They bend and wither over time because they’re the only ones we’ve got.
Obviously, we are cruel. We turn the volume all the way up so that the
song takes over the air around us, makes it so there is no place we’ve left
behind or a place to get to, there’s just the steady, blaring in-between
that lulls us to sleep.
4.
I pull on the hairs on your arm.
I wonder if they can hear me.
5.
Olivia, who is sensitive, can’t listen to certain songs
because they bring her to certain places and then, all of a sudden,
her phone dies so she has no way of getting back home
without walking through the town, asking a local for directions and in turn
making small talk with the local, stopping in a bodega to buy a bottle
of water, getting distracted by a father and his son skipping cracks in the sidewalk,
catching her reflection in the mirror of a used electronics store, thinking,
“I didn’t look this way when you used to love me.”
6.
Puloma is gonna get married one day and I’m going to slow dance
with her to “A Better Son/Daughter” at her wedding
and her husband will be watching and he won’t know
any of the words.
7.
Is it masturbatory to think I am going to be the song
you can’t remember the name of?
That You’ll tell the person next to You
(who is like me except maybe cut in half and bleached
and doesn’t care about social media so she only takes pictures
of trails and bugs), “It goes like ba-ba-ba” or maybe it’s “Da-da
-da-da” and she doesn’t know what you’re saying and takes out
her phone to check and the ba-ba-ba and the da-da-da-da is stuck
in your head for the rest of the day and also Your life?
8.
In the dark, Mariajose plays me three different versions of “Tennessee Whiskey.”
We can be so honest with each other but never actually
do anything about it. We say we hate
country songs to separate ourselves from whiteness
but what’s the difference between a country
song and a ranchera, anyway?
There are men and guitars and horses nearby,
there is inherited land that stretches for miles,
there are alcoholic sweat stains in the shape of a couch,
there is a sun that sets just for us.
9.
Stephanie sings “Hero” by Mariah Carey
at the Miss Teen New England contest in Connecticut.
We spend all day looking for a karaoke version.
We go to RadioShack.
We go to Best Buy.
We go to Newbury Comics.
The best they can do is lower the vocals
so Mariah’s voice is a little ghost
around my sister’s.
She gets third place.
We keep the trophies in the kitchen, behind glass.
10.
Actually, the first impression made to infants isn’t sight but sound.
It seeps through the belly and gets into the amniotic fluid. You probably
already know this. Mami always said I was smart because she put Mozart
on her belly. Maybe Mozart was the first man to get stuck in my head,
the first song I thought was only mine.
11.
It could feel like a knife slicing into the cheese of my brain,
or a cash register violently opening and closing, a restless alarm lover that doesn’t want me
to sleep. How to get rid of an earworm? The world-
wide internet suggests
chewing gum or having a conversation
or listening to the song all the way through,
or picturing the song ending,
for closure.
12.
Abuelita wants them to play Vicente Fernández
at her and Mariano’s wedding in the hospital chapel,
but all they have is the in-house music therapist
on his flute. At the funeral, we bury Mariano’s ashes with a corona
as his sister sings a song in Spanish. I don’t remember the name of the song now,
and two minutes later, she did not remember that he was dead.
13.
Chris blasting Bomb the Music Industry! to stay awake
on the New Jersey Turnpike, Samuel handing me the aux cord
asking what do I mean I don’t know “Bones” by the Killers? Jess touching
my leg on the highway and saying that this Best Coast song isn’t about Love
it’s about being an addict, Connor not saying anything
when I play “Yellow Eyes” on the Tobin Bridge.
Will sending me a recording of him singing Mitski
and not telling me his feelings were hurt when I didn’t respond.
Jon singing the bridge of
“Say It Ain’t So” in the car with Rae
at a stoplight at the top of his young lungs before the song
was a meme or a memorial. All of my lovers, all of my friends.
There is no song that belongs just to us.
14.
I wear the songs out.
I leave them out in the sun.
I forget to feed them.
I throw them in my backpack.
I get on my bike.
They rattle inside where they get scratched up
by my keys, my chargers, my pens, everything
I think I need to carry
with me as I make my way to You.
She is losing herself
and scrolling.
She is on Twitter
and reading an
interview with
Selena.
Are you worried about reports of Yolanda Saldivar being on the loose?
No offense, sweetie, but it’s time to get cancelled for good! Made my family suffer so much. She deserves to be punished and that’s on periodt.
Tell me about the new Selena doll
I made the new Selena doll because representation matters. Think about it. You grow up only playing with dolls for white girls, well guess what? Every girl deserves to hold a doll that looks just like her. Now, they finally can. We cannot truly see ourselves until we really see ourselves, as Audre Lorde once said. You can buy them in most record shops for $29.99. Use the discount code SELENAFOREVER to get 5% off.
And what about the young woman who brought you back to life, Melissa Losado-Oliviiana
I don’t know who that is! No comment.