By SERIN HWANG
some songs make me think of you.
earworms till through my brain matter,
electric guitar leaving earthen grooves in my body.
i retrace lines like i would retrace my steps in an old forest,
stretches of crumbling fern pointing me
to the same verses
again and again.
i press replay
and the song starts over,
a cooling body
infinitely replaying its entire life;
and i’m lost in the forest again,
and my pulse is a tangle of piano wire,
and i wish,
again,
that i could compose
myself like you compose
music.
waking up from the noise is like rot in reverse:
first, the decay of the last note.
second, the dead leaf
crackle of corroded speaker wires,
static buzzing like flies running the scales
of a fish’s corpse.
third, my emerging hum,
faltering like a rust-broken record
trying to grasp the last threads of
the first verse,
the bridge,
the slow heartbeat of the bass.
the human heart blooms
with flowers that thrive for the duration of a sustained note,
which,
relatively,
is not very long in the grand scheme of things.
amidst greenhouse gasses thrumming at an imperceptible octave,
we’re nothing.
we’re surrounded by dissonant noise
and infinitesimally short moments,
and yet I’m still here trying to compose myself
as you decompose me.
Writer | Serin Hwang ’27 | shwang27@amherst.edu
Editor | Caelen McQuilkin ’23 | cmcquilkin23@amherst.edu