'Clouds in the Summer'

Reading Music

I promise I stopped searching for you, and I promise I’m not trying to pull you back to me. You left me in the dust, and for good reason, but a string on my heart still hurts whenever I try to yank it. The gravity of my house is different now that the empty air feels so heavy.

Leaving you with this is unusual for me. I don’t believe in the burning necessity of closure. I’m harsh with myself when it comes to accepting what is and what isn’t. I don’t tend to seek it out like some people do. I found peace within myself, and I have no reason to disrupt it.

What happened in the past with other people doesn’t bother me anymore. I can tell it still bothers them. Their various counterclaims about me are all rehearsed and ready. The hasty generalizations from 10 and 18 years ago continue to follow my shadow. I can't sit inside a hot car while my old friends roast me. I can assure you, I have changed from the last time you observed my failures.

I hope you want to keep this photograph. It’s from the day you picked me up from work because it was raining. You wanted to drive through the road I took into town every day. The pictures I had already taken never turned out right. I always felt like something was missing. You drove up and down the hill until it was too dark to see anything, and then we stopped in that empty parking lot. I said I captured a lot of beautiful pictures within the seconds the car moved through the top, but I needed to stop trying to save such a perfect moment. While you were gazing out enjoying the weather, I thought I’d save a perfect moment anyway, and it worked too well. I see a montage of the happiest and saddest skipping flashbacks when I look at it. This photo still takes me right back to the inside of your car's rainy window. That's why I have to let it go.

I don’t know why it wasn't normal for me. I couldn't react to you in the same way I reacted to others. Your eyes outweighed all of the dealbreakers. If you wanted me to believe in something for you, I would've believed it. I think I was really in love with the songs I was listening to and the movies I was watching, and the things I wanted to write about. I loved you- I did- and it was fun, but I know how to open my heart to the fullness of time.

When you went away, I found myself writing letters to you that I didn't want you to read. By the time I was done, I thought about throwing them away or leaving them in random places around the city. I couldn't bring myself to burn them, shred them, or watch the paper and ink disintegrate in water. I think they all add up to the same story- I loved something you brought out in me, and I loved it until it was reckless.

I’ve been thrust into a new life now, where new raindrops will keep knocking against my window to bring me back from the pain of losing you. It floored me, and that wasn't normal for me.

So, you might want to store them away, not to be opened for years, or you might have an easier time getting rid of them.

The mountainous road stands ahead like a frozen tidal wave. Harmony had previously considered saying goodbye, but Oakley would not have wanted her to stop over anyhow. She no longer had the time nor the will to contemplate his whereabouts. It seemed like yesterday and an entire lifetime had passed all at once. A disastrous twenty-first birthday would forever be his last memory of her. It was the night she vowed to never throw another party again. Birthdays to graduations to holidays kept her from thinking bringing people together was a good idea.

Turning her focus back to the present, she turns up the playlist she made for the lengthy drive- first to Highway 101, and then on to Cannon Beach, Oregon.

Watch the music videos for "A Quarrelsome Playlist” on YouTube or save it for your summer reading vibes on Spotify 🍿🍹