DEad endgine: The day the music died

i’m sick of having dreams while driving

clinging to the wheel while my mind leaps to saturn and yours leaps to work 

i still don’t know where you work. the car likes to keep secrets from me.

memories faded still ascribing to the seats of tattered leather

obscured by the scratches on an outside faded fender 

a message signed with lipstick from an old heart assessor

is buried under air fresheners with scents decomposed

as i get dethroned from the deed. 

i think my trust in this car is falling apart. 

it was my dad’s idea to name this car melanie

so naturally, i renamed it.

 i don’t know the make or model of because i don’t know anything about cars

but it’s green. 

how ironic green means new beginnings

clinging onto aux cable conversations

because that’s all we have now. 

i say that as i’m sitting in the midst of pre-programmed dials that i can easily click

but the idea that i can erase all of our melodic memories with one click haunts me.

it haunts the car too. 

your jupiter may have returned, but my emotional maturity is still stuck in saturn

so scrounging for tune-ups to keep this car alive gets me thinking about patterns

 like that one outlining the triangle patch on your flannel sleeve

and the one responsible for the continuous reincarnation of the instagram dm on that christmas eve

so i’ll keep fixing the car until i don’t feel like it anymore.

but when this car is pronounced dead, it seems fitting that your playlist should die too. 

About the Author

Ryland McGinniss is a junior History and English major with a minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies. He loves to do advocacy work whenever he can, and honestly you'll probably see some of that reflected in his writing. When he's not busy with writing, he listens to music and one of his most prized possessions is his concert t-shirt collection.