Brand New reminds me of Will. Matt Costa reminds me of Jonathan. Wicked and Over the Rhine make me think of Carolyn. Shakira puts me back on the cushions of University Boulevard's hookah bar. Dresden Dolls, Elena. Being this age infects everything with feeling, subjectivity. I've been around long enough to have portioned out and pressed in, I am no longer only my own. This is what I've always been afraid the world would do to me, take away "innocence".

However, its end isn't the wasteland I imagined it would be. I'm walking the world a marked woman, now; September makes me think of leaving and I see old ghosts in airports. Certain books on the shelf, certain songs, the way he looked at me, the argument, the cigarette. So I'm twenty now, and I've felt grass and mud and carelessness. I've kissed, been kissed, cursed, prayed, coveted, disturbed the peace, been exactly who she needed, broke the window, escaped under starlight, known people who died, felt confusion, obsession, burned things for fun, found secret passageways, wrote letters I didn't send, wore the wrong shoes, got wet, danced, looked beautiful.

Acoustic strains thumbing at my neck. Everything is yellow and aspen.

What breaks me, though, is knowing that it ends with the music. After this song, Virginia will rasp out the last of its windows and evenings, and I will feel parted again.

I am afraid that one day, book spines won't move me. That the shiver of awe when a moth is blown in and caught burrowing against the window; it won't be enough to redeem me. A fatal ennui will remove all small ecstasies. How dependent I am, on the music. On stones breaking the surface of water. This curve of my insides that feeds on comets and handfuls of grass.