You don’t tell her that the album had soundtracked your previous summer. You don’t tell her that you had repeated the song ‘Brenda’, an ode to the artist’s grandma, so much so that you knew when the bassline would begin to slide under the strum of guitar chords, when the trumpet would riff and reverb, when there was a break, a slight pause where the music fell loose from its tightly wound rhythm. You don’t tell her that it was there, in the slight pauses, that you were able to breathe, not even realizing you were holding air in, but you were. There would be a moment where you exhaled and a
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