honeysuckle: poems by colleen cosette goodman

after laughter

Can we talk about Paramore ? Can we talk about After Laughter? How when that album came out, I was coming out of being sick, sequestered myself in the sunset, gone running in the summer of being sixteen, feeling all my feelings, writing my poems, getting better?
I went running in my mom's neighborhood when no one was home and no one was out as the sun ran by, and my brain was nullified by something not illicit, just the sweet music and the melodies. Feeling what my strong legs could do, while Hayley sang out Forgiveness and being sick and Fake Happy, and I tried to remember what I was here to do, that people understood me, that bad things had happened to me and I had been sick and needed to get better. Going by the ocean and all the houses in little rectangular drives, running and breathing in. God, I loved it. For the first time in years, I wanted to be alive.
I was living in the in-between: between being sick and being better, between rock bottom and recovery, between the seasons, between being lonely and being alone. I washed my makeup off and slipped on my headphones and ran until the soles on my sneakers wore. The world was mine, a new world dawning in sunset, with After Laughter as the soundtrack. I was alive alive alive alive

The sixth of October, 2017.

After Laughter is such a fucking good album and I just needed to let it be known how important is was to me.