There were nights my room felt more like me
than I did.
The radio low on the dresser.
The dial glowing.
The DJ talking like he knew secret roads out of town.
A stack of school books pretending to matter.
A heap of clothes in the chair.
Ticket stub in the drawer.
Two bad poems folded in a notebook.
A glass with three inches of flat soda going warm.
The window cracked open to let summer in
and hear cars fade up the hill.
I would lie there staring at the ceiling
waiting for the next song
like it might arrive carrying instructions.
That seems funny now.
Then it felt real enough to bet your pulse on.
A slow song could ruin me for an hour.
A hard one with enough drums in it
could make me believe I was one decent haircut
away from becoming the exact person I needed.
Every voice on the radio sounded older than mine.
Every song knew the road before I had even left the driveway.
The dark made promises.
The dark lied plenty.
I trusted it anyway.
I think that room saved me some.
Not in a grand, movie kind of way.
In the plain kind.
A door that shut.
A place to go strange in private.
A place to be dramatic without witnesses.
A place where a notebook could take the hit
for feelings too embarrassing to wear to breakfast.
People talk like teenage rooms are junk piles.
Mine was a country.
Messy, loud, half-invented, full of bad laws and secret religion,
but mine.
The radio was its moon.