I binge-bought Taylor Swift records
like they could fill the void you left.
1989 was announced two weeks after you died-
and I never stopped.
Every new album became a reflex.
Click. Purchase.
Something to hold onto
in a world that didn’t feel like mine anymore.
Or maybe I was trying to rebuild a sense of home.
Divorced from a man who handled conflict with his hands and dad-less in the same year
has a way of uprooting you completely.
Everything changed.
I sat alone in a cold apartment
staring at a blank phone screen every night-
waiting for messages that would never come.
The echoes of my own screams
still lived in the walls so,
I drowned them out with Hallmark Christmas movies and
tricked my brain into believing you were still here.
I haven’t slept in silence since you died.
Now there’s a whole bookshelf of it-
vinyls, albums, pieces of something people call a “collection.”
They think it’s because I love her.
But really-
I spent three years panic-buying records
like they could bring you back and now?
It doesn’t feel like a collection.
It feels like a memorial.
