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I hear pop songs on the radio.
I hear a low drone of sound that floats down the hall to my room from Krishna’s.
It draws me to his doorway, where I find Bridget sitting crossways on his bed, feet propped up on the backs of his thighs, book in her lap. Krishna lying on his stomach, a book open by his head, a chunky calculator resting by his left hand, his pencil scrawling over a notebook page making notations I can’t understand.
He’s tuned in to those numbers and symbols, but it’s the music that catches me.
Krishna plays this album a lot. I never noticed before that all the songs are love songs.
I go out for a run with Bridget, long sleeves and long tights on a cold morning as we jog in a rectangle around Putnam’s campus, turning left, left, always to the left. She runs slow for me, because I’m not as good a runner as she is, and because my pace falters every time I hear some new lyric, a fresh tilt to a tune I’ve never paid attention to.
I find myself waving her ahead, Go on, I’ll see you at home, because I need to listen hard, cupping my hands over my earbuds. I’ve just discovered—yes. This one, too. Another love song.
Angry love songs. Plaintive ones. Complaining ones, ecstatic ones, sexy moaning ones, cute ones, smug ones, turbulent bleeding aching disastrous ones.
Everywhere I go.
I stand by the side of the road on a cold morning, frost on the stalks in the ditch beside me, a crow on the telephone pole, a cloudless sky, listening to a woman pleading over a line of throbbing drums, Take me back, take me back, take me back, baby, take me back.
At home, Krishna’s music pulls me down the hall another time.
No Bridget today. They argued about something after dinner, and I haven’t seen her since.
“You okay?” he asks me.
I’m not sure what to tell him.
I’m in love.
Sometimes it feels like a terminal condition. Killing stupidity. Dangerous to my well-being. It makes me do dumb shit like fly to Oregon on a moment’s notice, and shred a hundred cigarettes to nothing.
Krish and Bridget are in love. It makes them do dumb shit like lie to each other about how they feel, pretend not to feel it, fuck and touch and kiss and then run, run, run.
Am I okay?
Is love like this okay?
It doesn’t feel okay. It feels necessary.
In the daytime I hear music, and I start to think that whatever is wrong with me might actually be what’s wrong with everybody.
I start to think it might be normal, because if it’s not, then what does it mean that all the songs are love songs?
What does it mean that I hear them now, everywhere I go?
Fall break is the last full week of October before Halloween. I spend a few days of it at home with my dad.
Home is like a thrift store shoe—I love the way it looks, but when I put it on, it feels stiff, creased in weird places. I can pretend it fits if I need it bad enough, but when I’m honest with myself I know it never will.
“You okay?” he asks.
Everybody asks. The other morning I caught sight of myself in the mirror coming out of the shower. I’m too thin, and I look like I haven’t slept through the night in about a year.
I haven’t.
“Sure.”
I’m fine. It’s just that I feel some days like I’m moving through liquid, and I have trouble sleeping. When I do sleep, I dream about burning alive. I dream about alien pregnancies. I dream about losing all my teeth, losing a baby I didn’t know I had and searching all over campus for it, in every classroom, in the post office, under every table at the library.
