Another Phoebe Bridgers Song
By Joyce Liu
I want to be a Phoebe Bridgers song when I grow up. To be on all your Spotify playlists. To make you hit replay until your fingers are numb. Wouldn’t it be something, to crack your frozen heart? To be the worm that can curl up inside the apple-meat of it, a little tunnel just for me to hide in.
Would you sing me before you sleep, or waiting for the lights to go green? Would you cry when you hear me scream? Would I fill your kitchen cabinets, would you hum me while doing laundry, like a secret, could I be the thing you listen to while you clean your bathroom, scrub the stains off your sink? Could I make you burn dinner? Could I make you stand in the shower until the water runs cold? When you’re lying in bed at midnight, could I run through your head while you stare at the ceiling? Would you let me stay after I run out of breath? I’d lie there next to you. We don’t have to touch. We could just share the air, like this, nose and mouth, wiry arm to wiry arm.
I want to be the song you reach for when you’re sad. I want to be the fragment of melody that ricochets around your head all day, that your mother hears while you’re squirting dish soap onto a plate and tells you to stop humming. I want to be the lyric that you get tattooed on your forearm so you see it every time you roll up your sleeves, so you feel it press against the desk whenever you write letters to someone else. I’m not asking for guilt, I know I won’t get it, I’m just asking for a little twig of your thoughts to land in my corner sometimes. Maybe if it happens enough I can build a nest. Maybe I’ll be the robin in your backyard apple tree, and I’ll sing to wake you in the morning, and you will hold my trembling wings in your cupped hands like a prayer, like a drink, like liquid gold in the dawning light. Maybe you’ll take me inside, and I’ll chirp from your mantel, and you’ll want me, and I’ll finally have somewhere inside you to stay.
June Lin is a young poet. She loves practical fruits, like clementines and bananas.
