stay

These words I whisper to the ones I love, If only because sometimes, I know not what else.


I can quote Jackson Browne, and peel his lyrics from my lips, as if I was a kid once again in the backseat of my mother's snug green minivan, taking us home and where we needed to go. Off the small two sided cassette tape, we echoed and I sat with her in the softness of our voices. Tirelessly, we heard his words and repeated "stay", "somebody's baby", and "the pretender". Our songs playing out, the music filling the gaps in time, those in between places where we are going to where we have yet to arrive, but the chords have their ways to work into your mind.
I close my eyes and picture my mother so young and beautiful, her dark hair and freckled skin, my bright clothes and small limbs. Where the songs have gone they have always been. In the fast moving cars, making the longest drive, the slowest of winters, go by.
 I must sing a long to the words I can't help but know, and the ones that will catch on.
Reminded of these songs, from two cars a part, J and I followed our way home with this song on the radio. A home that will bring me near and far away.


"when that morning sun comes beating down you are going to wake up in your town,
..People stay just a little bit longer"