If Not for My Baby

by Kate Golden

These nights are just for me. They’re for all I’ve given up. All I’ve made peace with never going after. They’re so the music can live inside of me again just for a little while, and so I can remember exactly who I am when that indescribable alchemy occurs.

The live audience, the adrenaline, the utterly liberating and devastating realization that every show can only exist in that moment. That you are one mere thread in the luscious tapestry that is unfurling before the crowd.

They are the richest green on earth. The green of a lush wood untouched by man.

With that I let my head fall backward into the vending machine in misery. Maybe it will swallow me whole and I’ll be reborn as a light blue Gatorade.

“I’ll concede I’m susceptible to lovesickness. And, perhaps, the errant bout of excruciating yearning.

Halloran laughs again and I’m hit with the strangest urge to store all his laughs somewhere safe. Cram them into a little treasure box and bury them in my backyard.

“Her Hestia and my hearthside, a feast of sea and soil, kneeling before her boldly, I swear that I’m made whole.”

“Don’t diminish your awe. The world’s a fine place; there’s plenty worth bein’ moved by.”

Tom’s brain must be the most fascinating place in existence. I wish it was a multistory bookstore I could wander through all afternoon.

“When you introduced yourself to me I thought you were an angel…Come down from on high to ruin my life.”

We speed past a wide plateau of high grass and wildflowers, which roll on endlessly until interrupted by sweeping green peaks. And not gray-green, or rife with patches of cardboard brown, but a rich, verdant emerald. Tom has the eyes of his homeland.

I started writing songs for you the first night we met. I couldn’t stop myself.