while humming idly some stupid tune at the sink, I’ll realize for the first time ever what! that line meant (though of course pop everywhere’s a language so reliable it’s nearly nothing, baby let me know and I need you in my arms on babbling loop through the ages), and I’m thinking, too, about how this, my first love of losing myself in the scaffolds and percussives of an unparsed lyric doomed me for life to never be able to hear, actually hear, the words to any songs, even in English, even my favorites, like Jamila’s, which I put on when I’m adrift and sunken and just need to feel at home in
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