you dont wanna know where i found this song
so when my buddy comes in he just about knocks the door off its hinges—i know because i saw the hinges crying about it later—and he says to me that i gotta go set up the record player for a forty-five.
so i’m halfway done tripping on the choicest shrooms i’ve ever done when my buddy comes charging in on horseback only he was the horse and his dick was the reigns. so he comes in screaming bloody hell about some obvious bullshit; you know, like how he’s found another government camera in his toilet or some shit. if you ask me, the boys in the cia oughtta be bored of the voyeur schtick by now. so anyways my buddy storms in while i’m tripping my tits off at the kitchen table. i distinctly remember sitting away from the window because i didn’t want the dog to know that i knew she was watching me. for some reason, i was also magnetized which meant I could only face true north. so when my buddy comes in he just about knocks the door off its hinges—i know because i saw the hinges crying about it later—and he says to me that i gotta go set up the record player for a forty-five. first of all, i didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. but i got up anyways and followed him around for a while until we were in front of the record player. i tried asking my hands what to do since my buddy didn’t know. no one wanted to talk so i shut my eyes and next thing i knew we were slipping a thin forty-five onto the disc mat. i have a fear of needles so i got my buddy to put it on while i worked my way back up my body to find my head. by that point someone had put on some music and it was kinda groovin’ real slow and mellow but it kept slowing down the more i focused on it. my body swayed back and forth with the relaxed tempo before realizing i’d become a tree with no leaves, strong in my roots but visibly diminished and still against the wind. so i turned myself around to find the music again. i figured i’d catch up to it if i spun with the record. after maybe three spins i caught a taste of the song. another three and i could feel its beat, but only inside my chest. then, after three final spins, i began to remember the song. i’d heard it before, but where? i was too dizzy to continue the thought so i fell into a blanket and rolled myself together. looking up, i found my buddy vibing and a little drooly. i tugged on his shoestrings. what the fuck is this? i asked. his face grew into that of a tree spirit and creaked against the tension while his lips cracked. he said some kind of words to me but it was in an old language that time forgot so i asked him again. this time he coughed up a chunk of thread which i promptly tugged. the line ran deep but not so deep that the song had time to finish. but that’s no surprise anymore. i doubt the song will ever finish. i followed the line until i came into a hidden meadow somewhere in the bony forest of my buddy’s ribcage. sickly little flowers bloomed all around me. each one sang a note so divine i dared not repeat it. i gathered enough to form a bouquet to give to my buddy but when i bunched all the flowers together the notes they sang began melting back into the song. only this time i remembered where i heard it last. it was the terrifying sound of rebirth—the elevator music on endless repeat while souls float between lives.
Alannah Guevara is a poet-wife and vilomah. She is the EiC of Hunter’s Affects. Besides the aether, some places her words call or will call home include HAD, fifth wheel press, Querencia Quarterly, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety. Find Alannah on Twitter @prismospickle and her work on Chill Subs.
