Page 24 of Never Lasting (Never Blue)

Jude

The foundationof my hopes and dreams was built on smoky bars and drunken college students who didn’t give a shit.

Shaky at best.

The song I was about to sing was written on the back of a fast food receipt gotten after the funeral of three of my high school friends who were killed in a drunk driving accident. I’d sat in my car, Ben silent for once in the passenger seat, overcome with the need to take the maelstrom from inside me and commit it to paper.

Every slash of ink had given me a drop of relief. Each syllable meant a second for me to breathe without knives in my lungs.

I wrote it in twenty minutes, then handed it over to Ben and sobbed for the first time since I’d gotten the phone call.

I’d sung this song a thousand times since that day in my car, and I swear, Ben had been there every time. The words never lost their meaning and releasing them meant opening that wound that should’ve healed a long time ago. But I had always spilled my blood on stage. I didn’t know how else to do it.

Maybe that was why I’d become so disillusioned with it all. Spilling my blood in front of an audience who’d rather me be singing the latest Green Day single was soul-sucking.

Cupping the microphone between my hands, I gave them everything. I had no choice in the matter. They could take my everything and toss it in the trash, or laugh over it, or ignore it like background noise, but I was going to do it anyway.

were we ever young

or did our youth get swept aside

for the loneliness of growing up

on the highest wrung

we were given it all

except what we needed

to survive this hard knock life

and brace for the fall

can’t stop the madness

drifting past sadness

falling into lonely

sinking below slowly

slept but still tired

fighting the muck and get mired

never going to be okay

again now that we are certain

this shit we never wanted

will all be stripped away

wounds dressed with strands of gold

suckled in the lap of luxury

fed with a silver spoon

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