Prince died today (a poem)
Prince died today.
And it’s making me feel like shit.
No more Paisley parties, even if I
quit going after college.
I didn’t quit. I lived too far away.
No more bragging about
hypothetical future Paisley parties.
That. That’s the part that’s killing me.
And I really did say, just
last week,
“At least Prince will never die.”
Because he isn’t Michael Jackson,
he’s Minnesota. Even if I
secretly wondered what would happen to the vault.
A cluster-fuck of privacy clauses, copyrights, unreleased
recordings. I had wondered this before, to be clear.
Prince died today.
And I really did think we would go someday,
you and me and Dustin and Keith.
Like when I couldn’t get into bars so Paisley was it.
That. That’s the other part that
kills me.
My 20 year old self is in me right now, kicking
the shit out of me,
wishing she had known
she would never
go back,
wishing she had
gone back,
wishing she had pet
that man in the big fur coat,
asked to see his jet,
danced less self-consciously,
eaten more pretzels.
While my 37 year old self yearns–
for a future that was
only ever imagined, that was
always unlikely,
of you and me and Prince at Paisley,
and I am kicking
the shit out of me
even if just last week I told
myself precisely about this
possibility:
bask now,
bask before there are no pretzels.
And so I am stuck. Stuck somewhere in my missing him and missing the pretzels and missing what never was and missing you–I have missed you so much, do you know how much? I have missed you every second of this week, of this month, and I need you to swear to me that we will never do this many months, so many months, apart, I don’t care what our careers advise. I’ve become a knot. A pretzel.
The thing is, I think I need to untangle myself from myself, and I can’t do it
without you.
Until then, I might just stop talking. I think that’s the best advice, that’s what Prince advised, though I don’t do silence well.
Shhhhh.
That’s what my shitty sense of yearning, of how-the-fuck-did-I-take-so-little-advantage-of-so-much-for-so-long, of air-exhaled-loudly-in-a-public-library advises.
Shhhhh.
Until it all, this all, becomes one.
You and me and him and the silence and the pretzels–at the parties, at Paisley, on the table, at the end. One feeling of loss, of longing, of unrealized opportunities, talked past, prolonged until they become ethereal, other-worldly, and also, existential.
Prince died today; it’s making me miss you, me, us, what could have been.
It’s making me feel like shit.
