Hand in Unlovable Hand

The girl from every song I have ever loved broke my heart, so I’m breaking all the records that remind me of her. “Only a broken woman would destroy her vinyl collection for a man,” I once said, pointing to the dumpster where a piece of personal history lay abandoned. Because my relationship with music is so much more than my relationship with any man will ever be. I was naive, and those were boys. This was a girl. A living, breathing girl I wrote songs, sonnets, plays, and poems about. The girl of my dreams, with the softest touch and a softer heart. She held my heart in her hands, the first one to ever do it gently. Until she broke it. This bitch.

So I slowly take my records out of their sleeves; I play them, hoping my chest doesn’t hurt listening to this one. I hope... but my chest doesn't ever not hurt. I find a battered and bruised version of No Children. My old gramophone plays hand in unlovable hand, over and over again, but it's just my hand in mine, and there is no going back. My cold, bony, interlaced fingers form a cage for my lone heart to beat in. There is only pain. I hear the crack of my most prized possession. Here lies a piece of personal history, abandoned on the street, waiting for a day-drunk college girl to come take a picture of it. I see her from my window, and I hope she writes about the picture in her creative writing class someday.