the rosebush of nostalgia

The rosebush of nostalgia does tangle, cut and choke.
And every bloom just out of reach.

There are few things that can pull you as music does. Can pull you to a person, a place, a time, a version of yourself. Who you were and how. To fill you with the same gnarled up emotions and self doubt and wishes for amorous entanglements. A human history told in mixtape.

And this is a version of you with no armour. There is nothing to protect you. This mixtape is a cross section of your soul laid bare, for all it's rings to be read.

What do you do when someone hands you that very mix? This delicate reconstruction of themselves. Quiet and careful and pure and talented and beautiful and really proud of all of it, but nervous about showing it, because no one has ever seen it all before?

You fucking love it, is what you do.

Because you have no choice. You let yourself be pulled under by it because it is so perfect and so clear and so honest that you can't help yourself. And that person becomes a part of you. As much as them making that tape is about you, listening to it is about THEM. You are sewn into their nostalgia, their soundtrack, even as they are adding notes to yours. A quilt of heartbeats. The thing that bypasses word or touch or even the songs themselves and just send pure emotional content into you. Into your sun; into the star around which the rest of you orbits. Into your nucleus.

And that gives you something. It gives you a bond with that person deeper than friendship or love or respect. It is a shared history. Twin hearts. A slice of the soul in a jar, and gifted to you.