Sump Pump

I.

In 2006, at 25, Justin Vernon holes up alone in a cabin

four hours north from where I live. I imagine

Eau Claire, Wisconsin as a watercolor landscape,

where red horses graze on planes nourished by heartbreak.

Vernon conjures melody in that morose spring, with spurts

of delicate storms. Now, I listen to For Emma, Forever Ago

whenever it rains. It is an album which looks murkily through clear

water, at the familiar faces rippling back. It never fails to beckon

my deepest confession: I have only ever broken my own heart

because no one ever cared to do it for me. I pick up the slack.

Ii.

In 2024, at 22, I take the train home in the rain after seeing

an old friend. July holds its humid breath. I try to forget

the time he told me he owned For Emma… on vinyl, and I wrote

“I’m sick to my stomach” in jest. What I mean to say is:

I want what he has. I slip from Rosemont to Division

in the Blue Line’s familiar jolting instant. The windows whet

with rain, and the shuffle swing of “Lump Sum” emerges once again,

a chorus dancing through the drizzle like a freed wraith. I think,

I cannot harbor this heartache any longer. It is a well-loved grave.

My ardor is a dull throb set to the shimmy of delicate strums,

unleashing a flood of doubled vocal, morose oboe, the absence

of drums. As I step into the light from the subway, I imagine

every lost love can result in a classic with ten years behind it,

that I too might pen a breakout record from a forever gone moment.