New York State of Mind | zm au

Iris

Strumming the strings on my guitar is the homiest feeling I can get. It's as if everything else just melts away from the sun. My worries are icicles. Music is the ever-powerful heat of spring. Although I'm stuck in the thickness of winter, music has the power to take me somewhere else completely.

It's the early hours of Saturday morning. I tried to sleep, but my apartment is so cold, so empty, so lonely. My guitar is warm. Holding it is like living again in the fields of North Dakota. My mothers laugh and fathers bright eyes...

All gone in an instant.

Roaring flames and crackling tendrils or fire is all I remember of that night. I try not to reminisce much from my childhood, feeling the burn of loss all over is not a feeling I want to be familiar with.

'And I don't want the world to see me'

I've been through too many foster homes, each one a chink on my belt. The hisses of laughter still echo in my memories. I was different.

'Because I don't think that they'd understand'

I never found anyone who burdened the same loss I had. Numerous friends eventually left me. Off to an all-American family to raise them. But no one wanted the girl who watched her parents die in front of her.

'When everything's made to be broken'

My entire life has been one cruel twist of fate after another. I meet someone who understands me. Gone. I think my life will be normal. Wrong.

'I just want you to know who I am'

Music saved me. Because when I heard a song, I know thousands of other people heard that song too. It made me feel connected to the world, connected to humanity.

"Darling, it's two in the morning. I applaud your voice but please, get some sleep." The boy from across the hall whispers loudly through the door. He cares enough to tell me to sleep, so I'll care enough to let the darkness of slumber overtake me.

One last strum on my guitar is his thanks. I set it down on the bench near the window and retire into my bedroom.

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