Forbidden Music

I found this in my notebook. I don't remember writing it, but I know which song it is.



There are songs I know to not listen to when I am alone.

The ghost of my dead twin taps me on the shoulder, and I curl over in my bed. Spine poking through my skin, the beat of the drums on the blanket over my head, my heart thumping underneath. The smoke from my cigarette echoing against the ceiling, halting then retreating in long, swirling shadows on my skin. Repeating, breathing patterns, transparent and fleeting. I fight sleep; I do not want to sleep like this.

Songs like these amplify the loneliness. In the daylight, I can blast it against the wall like a fallout shadow; in the hours before dawn, when a handful of birds begin to sing and everything else is still, I feel the most disconnected and restless. I wonder if anybody knows I exist.