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Weak coffee, pre-dawn. We’re sneaking out like we’d robbed the place. Mayflower beach, July’s gone. We’re all alone dancing in the waves. I found you some seaglass. You always loved seaglass. I see you, in the side room, chain smoking darts in your favorite chair. You tell me about the moon, or Ursa Minor, the Little Bear. I peer through your telescope–see the parts you want me to know. I’ll remind the flowers every morning in the dawn. I’ll make sure they don’t forget they’re wanted and they’re loved. I’ll carry what you taught me–hold it close until I’m gone. I’ll sleep in peace. I’ll wake in light. I’ll soldier on. They should name you the Saint of Patience for all the shit that you put up with. Still awake at 3 am since you couldn’t sleep ‘til the kids were in. I sip slow on a Barry’s Tea, the kind that you’d always make for me. In your dress shoes and a bathrobe, lost in a blue plume of Pall Mall smoke. You tell a story that doesn’t end, so I laugh along with you as you go, ‘cause your idea of heaven is us at 187.
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2. |
Flight No. 5
04:06
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Flight No. 5, US Air. Delayed in the snow. Stuck at O’Hare, but when I land in Philly, I’ll wait at the carousel near Baggage Claim D stairs. I’m planning to kiss you there. In an amber yellow notebook, I mailed you my heart again last night. It’s getting harder now to find new words to describe the way that I miss you all the time. I’ve been making some plans. I’ve been looking at schools, but as soon as I land, you say the distance is too goddamn cruel. So, I’m turning around. I’m changing up everything. I’m breaking all the rules. I’m moving out west with you.
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We’d paint at the S Bridge, in the Summer of ‘17. Underneath the August moon, we’re dangling our feet, and you tell me that you’re hurting, and I tell you can’t leave, on the S Bridge, in the Summer of ‘17. The freight trains go rushing underneath. When I face into the wind, it feels like they’re coming right at me. I tell you that I’d save you, and you tell me you’d save me, on the S Bridge, in the Summer of ‘17. At the school house on North Allen Chapel Road–left abandoned to the ivy–we break in from below. I boost you through the floorboards. You paint flowers in the cold, at the school house on North Allen Chapel Road. On Christmas, in soft cover of snow, I hung bouquets from the piping–baby’s breath and rose–and I tell you that I love you, but I bet you already know, at the schoolhouse on North Allen Chapel Road. Got our own place at Canterbury Green. The bathtub’s way too small, but the two of us still squeeze. Hung the roses in our bedroom, drank a bottle of JD at our own place at Canterbury Green. When we first learned that you were meant to be, skipped classes for the doctors, got tattoos we couldn’t see. Named you Willow when we met you, and we knew we were complete, from the S Bridge in the Summer of ‘17.
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4. |
My Break in the Rain
03:22
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I met you as a wanderer–a restless aching soul. Like a storm out of Ohio, I blew in with the cold. You asked if I liked hockey, and if I wanted to go to see the minor leagues play, since we talk all afternoon. Kept a secret from our bosses, know that they wouldn’t approve. You were too afraid to kiss me, so I had to make the move. You were my break in the rain–the hour of sun on our wedding day. You were the light on Laurel Lake singing “Satisfied” in harmony,and I just wanted to be tethered to you endlessly. You moved into my apartment. Been together a few months. It’s a dated little shithole–four people living there at once. When we moved out in the springtime, still had the Christmas tree left up. Begged you to walk with me through DC, up 17th Street heading north, over all the cherry blossoms that had blown off in the storm. Put our feet into the fountain. Told you I loved you to your core. You were my break in the rain–my arch of hydrangeas and peonies. You were the light on Laurel Lake–the summer Carolina humidity, and I just wanted to be tethered to you endlessly.
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Ambassador Bridge
03:10
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The Ambassador Bridge in the light of a silver moon. Detroit smiles back at me as I’m making my way to you. The Ambassador Bridge in the pale yellow-orange dawn, on the way back to Canada. Sure as anything that you’re the one. It’s like rolling thunder; I’m going under again,
but I never wondered if you’d be waiting when I come back in. The Ambassador Bridge, in panic of losing you, out to Windsor Regional, as the sky turns an inky blue. In these teal curtained walls, hooked up to all the machines, I’m not leaving this room again, until you’re walking out next to me. I’m at home with you in Ferndale–a tiny yard where our hearts grew.
I always sleep easiest when I’m sleeping next to you. The Ambassador Bridge, from a house on the eastern side, that we share with Finnegan for the rest of our lives. The Ambassador Bridge carries me safe to you, forever and always now, just how we had planned it to.
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Out on Gull lake, in a peach-plum dawn, in your Edson boat, I’m safe. A summer day, pulling walleye up, then the morning comes. I’m awake and the pain starts in my sternum, then it radiates. When I see your face, made of brick and stone, it’s strong and bold and brave. It starts to fade, and you’re weaker now, cursing these goddamn legs. I know you gotta go, but I was hoping that you’d stay. Hoping you’d stay. Hoping you’d stay. At Erin Ridge, where I’d come from school when I was faking sick. You’d take me in. When the world got dark, you let me be a kid, and I know you couldn’t stay, but I really wish you did. I wish you did. I wish you did. You told me not to get old. You felt the weight in your bones. I knew you needed to go,
but I felt so alone. You told me not to get old. Watching your light go out slow, with a lump in my throat. Wish we were back on your boat. You told me not to get old. You told me not to get old.
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7. |
The Kings of Halloween
03:32
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Hey Kathy, can you hear me? How you doing? I could use you tonight. Hey Kathy, are you listening? I gotta question, and you were usually right. You told me to go to Susequahanna, and it changed my whole life. You said not to rush home in a snowstorm, and we got stuck there on the drive. You came to rescue me. You’d always rescue me. Hey Kathy, I started a garden, but I wasn’t blessed with your green thumb. So, there on my skin, I planted roses, I planted hyacinths, I planted mums and a bouquet of hydrangeas ‘cause they remind me of you, and one single sunflower like the ones you always grew, and a lilly for my sister. Ma, she misses you. Hey Kathy, when we were children, you made us feel like we were the sun. I never knew that we didn’t have money. You kept us learning and we didn’t want. You took us to Tuscarora; we had picnics on the beach. Sewed us all of our own costumes; we were the kings of Halloween. You drove Ian down to Philly to witness Springsteen. Hey Kathy, when I think that I’m crumbling, I stand up straighter ‘cause you built me strong. You taught us empathy. You taught us to take care of each other. You taught us selflessness. You taught us love. So we’ll light bayberry candles every year on Christmas Eve, and we’ll be home for Sunday dinner; we’ll cook all your old recipes. We’ll keep moving forward. That’s what you’d wanna see. Hey Kathy...
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8. |
In Love in Various Rooms
03:45
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In my broke-down Honda Civic––the piece of shit barely drives––we played songs from the backseat. I held you close as you cried. It’s always a little damp here after the rain ‘cause it seeps in the cracks in the window frame. Our first place in Columbus–apartment twenty-one–with the dirty, dingy carpet, with the beige-colored tub. But I feel like myself here laying with you. I think that you know what we gotta do. We don’t need your congratulations. What we got is a big, bright ball of light. We don’t need anyone’s permission. I’m gonna love you ‘til the day that I die. I’m gonna love you ‘til the day that I die. In a room with your parents, we escape to the beach, and my heart breaks for the millionth time when your mom starts to scream. Someday, it’ll just be me and you–we could sit here as long as we wanted to. In an office building downtown, on a backdrop made for pets, we got married with our friends around. Still took our photos on the courthouse steps to let them know they couldn’t stop us if they tried. I kissed you under the pale Ohio sky. A little house in Carolina, in a cool autumn breeze, watching the sunset from a hammock, our names carved into the tree, I’m thinking of the steps that brought us here–how there’s no way I finish without you, dear.
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9. |
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You and me, we were seventeen. I was walking you home. Felt alive in the summer heat.
Streetlights painted you gold. On the church steps at Holy Name, I kissed you under the moon
and carved the date into everything–July 22. You and me at my cousin’s place under 95. I watched you laugh uncontrollably by the patio lights, and knew I needed a second chance, needed you back in my life, needed you singing the harmony at night when we drive. I don’t wanna say that you saved me, but you saved me. I didn’t feel like I was any good until you. I couldn’t lose your laugh again. Oh no, baby. Yeah, you showed me some things are worth staying for, and for me that was you. You and me almost twenty three, surrounded by hand-me-downs, where the hot water never worked–cheapest apartment in town. I left you flowers along the stairs, and started carving with you a new date into everything–August 22.
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I don’t know where I’d be without you–probably lost in the tangles of life. You taught me to swim, you taught me to laugh, you taught me to drink my coffee black but more than that you taught me to be kind. I’ll remember you in the summers at Cedar Point. We’ll take Gloria just like how you took us, and I’ll smile, time and again, when I think of how you tricked Em into riding Magnum, when she thought it was a slower one. I’m picturing you, Charlie and Kobe circling the block again for the thousandth time. I’m picturing you, laughing with Gloria. I love you. I miss you. Goodnight. I don’t know where we’d be without you–probably smoking cigs ‘cause you’d never have caught us. But I guess, sometimes, we’d slip by, like when you came down late at night and we gave you OJ, and passed away the vodka. I’ll remember you, in June, at Penguin Palace–riding our bikes there, summer of ‘99. I’m gonna go, order up a hot fudge sundae, extra nuts, then wait to eat it ‘til the middle of the night. I’m picturing you, Charlie and Kobe circling the block again for the thousandth time. I’m picturing you, laughing with Gloria. I love you. I miss you. Goodnight. I love you. I miss you. Goodnight.
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Dan Campbell Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Dan Campbell is a storyteller moonlighting as a songwriter and this is his first time releasing music under his own name. You might know him from his work in The Wonder Years or Aaron West and The Roaring Twenties. This is him by himself, mostly. Some friends helped. They were kind to do so and they added a lot of depth to these songs ... more
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