Silver Springs

They call Stevie Nicks “the White Witch”. And she is, clearly. For a while now, I swear she embodies the spirit of woman, hints to me that I’m Lindsey Buckingham. Maybe that’s my vanity talking. But never more poignantly than now, this past couple of years. Or ten years prior to that. Or when I was 16 and first fell in love. She sees me before I even see myself. Never behind me, always several paces ahead, anticipating my steps.

In bed with my headphones on. On the radio, stuck in traffic. A song from my phone during a laundry folding session before work. She looks at me and sings about profound feelings, dresses me down, while staring powerfully, painfully into my eyes. She challenges me. She is disappointed in me, to say the least. Did she give up on me, or does she wonder if I can be better? “You dumbass. You’re just a kid, and I need a man, I need a heart as big as mine.” A muse that fuels my self-doubt, she’s another conscience.

But even still, I’m not nothing. Even after having gone past hundreds of exits and rest areas on the freeway, and past being young and strong, charming, without an aged face. I can still make something out of the nothing in the plain air between my fingers. Well, I used to. I persist and promise that I won’t lose my composure. I play my parts. Play a lick without a flat note, still knowing it won’t impress the White Witch. She didn’t love me because I could play the guitar, anyhow.

I go on a stage, and play a melody alongside you, while you occasionally sing songs written about me (they aren’t all kind). I’m always painfully aware of the daggers that come flying to pin me. They stick me in Fresno, pop me in the eye in Cincinnati, a head shot in Philly, or lacerate me thoroughly, recorded on TV for posterity. An anniversary wiped off a dry erase board, like it never took place at all. Like Rasputin, or a Subaru, somehow I just won’t die. I keep doing it.

Maybe not like a love lost, but a failure you wisely looked past? Best I can do is play along and try to keep up, because even though you’re calling me out for my mistakes, I want to make your song as beautiful as I can. I thought that was my job. I knew it wouldn’t always be pretty, but damn beeb, I never thought it could get this ugly. The stillness of remembering what I had. And what I lost.

The song is sad, but I’m still making music with you. I could not be on your stage at all, and I make no mistake, it is your stage. I hear you sing. I breathe to hear you sing, to know your thoughts. How you feel, and try to feel it in-kind. The audience admires you, and they absolutely should. I’m the greying hack you used to call “yours”, trying his best to remember a guitar part he wrote 20 years ago, back when we still held hands. Back when there was no doubting the light and the heat of the fire.

I see you, White Witch. I wish I could give you something better than a dressed-up apology. Life took giant bites out of me long before we met. I had no clue, what to do with the likes of you. I didn’t think you were even possible, let alone have someone like you extend your hand out to me. But I will take what I deserve. And I will still love you. I still remember those eyes, that desire. Spellbound. Staring me dead in the face while awake, in dreams, nowhere to hide. I remember raw lips. Sharing a pair of earbuds with our backs on the grass, taking the sun. I had earned your trust. I’m still haunted by how much those eyes wanted me, but nowhere near the death sentence of how they just turn away now. Taken by the wind.

I throw my guitar to the ground, it screams at me, along with everyone else, while I storm off the stage. But not like a child this time. But because of the bone rattling catharsis. Because life is too short to stay where you don’t belong, where you aren’t wanted, needed. No matter how badly you wish everything was different. Even if this is my fault, even if at the end of the day, I just wasn’t what you wanted. When it’s time to go, go your own way.

Talk of a reunion? I won’t lie and claim I’m not tempted. You know better than me about time. How quickly it runs out, how a landslide can slam and fucking destroy everything, with no preamble. Like curses, chaos doesn’t work that way. Defying the laws of physics, how so much can disappear into thin air in much less than a blinking eye. Hearts can go, too. Pick up the pieces and go home.

I’ll accept loneliness as my fate. It was you or no one, and now it’s down to no one. The answer to our equation is zero. I’ll stutter it incessantly in a nursing home, if the world hasn’t been destroyed by the time I’m fit for one. By the time I lose my very last marble, maybe I’ll be delusional enough to think I’m on that porch swing with you, finally. Listening to the wind blow. I’ll go out with some sense of calm, to a tranquil, smiling lullaby. Fitting for an old man who needs that last, perfect dream. But I’m longer in the tooth now, and I know that isn’t how life, how love, and how curses work.

“There is nothing worse than being under the curse of the White Witch.” My heart breaks too, woman. Maybe worse, further beyond repair than yours. For I don’t have your magic, I don’t know your spells. Maybe my broken heart doesn’t draw a response like yours. Your pain is beauty, mine pity. Nothing worth showing. Now, I sit a stone, covering my bugs and worms. 

One day, years from now, I’ll see the sign for the exit to Silver Springs on the interstate. Maybe on some road trip or vacation with my daughter and her kids. And just like Stevie Nicks, I will cry. And remember you. Remember warmth and possibilities, the courage to dream, and how we used to make music. “I’ll never live to match the beauty again, the rainbow’s edge.”

Her curse.

“I’ll follow you down until the sound of my voice will haunt you, you’ll never get away from the sound of a woman that loves you.”