the boys of summer

The kind of night when you listen The Boys of Summer over and over. And I fucking hate Don Henley. But that song. Brilliant. To those of a certain age, the most brilliant. The sound of the 80s, beneath all the coked-out fever dreams and anger. A long line of melancholy and regret. Realization of all that is gone and all that barely was. When he pleads that he'll love you even after the boys of summer are gone, there's a desperation that is so real, you know that if that love was real it only was for a moment and now it's just a ghost, another memory that won't leave him alone. And that echoing guitar in the break, crying like a seagull fading into memory. Another reminder of all that is gone. Echoes, echoes.

The sadness is always there, lurking. Some nights you can't put it down with beer or words or hugging your daughters. It sits on your shoulder and sends songs into your head. Scrambling  up these words and crawling off to bed, hoping sleep drowns it out. In a house of bodies, ghosts.

You can't look back, you can never look back. But you will.