Don't it always seem to go?

Something that feels unfinished written in my writing workshop last month.

My brother hates Joni Mitchell. I’ve never asked him why, I’ve just expressed shock. How can anyone hate her music? Actually, I’m sure I have asked him at least twice before. I think he said it was her voice, that high pitch that claws into your soul with her piercing sound. 

The same reason I like her. That haunting searching voice that distracts you from all the other noise in the world. 

When I finally got a record player, after the breakup, when I had things that were all mine again, Blue was one of the first albums I was set on buying. I wanted Joni’s soulful voice to fill my new echoey apartment. I wanted her to welcome me to my new home. But all of the copies I found at record stores were so expensive. 

And then digging through the records in my bosses basement I found it. Joni Mitchell’s Blue, bought and used but still in excellent condition. Now mine for free. Another sign in a long line of them that I was in the right place. Joni popped up right when I was least expecting to find her. 

Alissa loved Joni Mitchell. Especially that one song, I can’t remember the name of it now, let’s call it Big Yellow Taxi, because that feels like a song Alissa would have loved. Upbeat and bright, chanting a call to action. I remember searching for that song when she was sick in bed not long before she passed, playing it from the tinny speakers of my phone, a YouTube video because Neil and Joni pulled their music from Spotify. We all sang along and Alissa smiled. Even my brother was singing, gritting through his hate for Joni which was overwritten by his love for Alissa that night.

I guess what I am trying to say is that we could all be gone tomorrow and Joni is right, don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got til it’s gone. But I am consciously seeing this one and feeling it and breathing it in. Here we are back at love and I’m sorry but also I’m not. Because we could all be gone tomorrow, paved over, covered by parking lots. So I’m memorizing this one, all of the things, the way the bed feels different when he’s in it. My cold hands on his warm back and the squeal that comes out of his mouth when I make that cruel maneuver. The warmth of him next to me. Every tooth I can see in his smile. The sound of his laugh when I do something totally expected. The way the trees look greener against the sky after I’ve spent time with him. 

It’s so dumb but I’m eating it up like all the sugar I never let myself have enough of. I want some sugar in my bowl. Come to think of it, I'd take Nina’s soulful sound over Joni’s high pitches any day. I wonder if my brother would too. If the deep boom of Nina Simone would resonate more with his complicated soul. 

I want a little sugar in my bowl. I want a little sweetness down in my soul. Show me someone who doesn’t. 

I’m tracking this steam on my clothes, savoring it just like Nina. Smooth and sultry and slowly moving with the rich piano tones. Snapping along, counting the kisses, recording the minutes, memorizing all of it because we could all be gone tomorrow you know.