(a.k.a. in which I listen to the Hamilton soundtrack on repeat as part of the attempt to get over you)

Say,
That would be enough.
Say you’d still want this:
us alive, right here, feeling lucky.

— Ada Limón

Headphones on, bus rumbling through rivers. Rain falling. “Should we climb mountains and cross rivers together?” I asked. “Of COURSE we should,” you responded.

So we did our best in the weather that was given to us. You promised me an adventure, and we sang so many songs along the way. We have arrived at the end of the trail, bursting from all the tough terrain and beauty that is now behind us. I come away from it, quietly delighting in the way we got so close to it all and yet managed to remain so far. “Just call it horizon, & you’ll never reach it.” I hold the topography of your landscape close inside me as I watch it grow smaller in the rearview mirror. “Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,” you send to me some final lines of poetry. I resolve to comply.

“Beep beep boop,” chirped my phone as it revived itself in the world of reception. “Beep beep boop,” I responded, trying to speak a language you’d understand.

***

After I walked to the edge of the world and back, the big all-terrain wheels of the bus shook me from side to side. The movement made everyone else nauseous — yet all I wanted to do was write about my feelings. “That’s probably a metaphor for your life,” my friend tells me solemnly after I recount my actions. “You should blog it.”

And it’s #Hamilversary today! So just for fun, in lieu of emo poetry, here’s our love story in too many parts, composed on a bus-and-plane ride, told only in lyrics excerpted and rearranged from a musical.

Take out your hairbrush microphone, belt it out. It makes you feel better, I promise. Extra points if you can figure out which songs each line is from. Ha. Cheers and happy anniversary to Lin-Manuel, for creating his masterpiece and also reminding us that love makes the world go round. Thanks, T., for convincing me to post.

Accuse me of being cheesy, but it’s a good life when music’s involved, isn’t it? It’s a good life when we’re involved.

“Look at where we are… Look at where we started.”
I. 
Boy you got me helpless, do I run or do I let it be?
He’s a bit of a flirt but I’ll give it a chance.
I’m a diamond in the rough, and the revolution is happening.

I look into your eyes and the sky’s the limit, I’m down for the count and I’m drowning in them.

She warns, “They have not your interest at heart.”

II. 
“You strike me as a woman who has never been satisfied.” Ha!
There is no one who can match you for turn of phrase.
All I have is my honor, a tolerance for pain, a couple of college credits and my top notch brain–

Show me how to say no to this, I don’t know how to say no to this.
“Just you wait.”

III.
She said, “Be careful with that one, love. He will do what it takes to survive.”

You say the price of my love is not a price you’re willing to pay.
So why so sad?

Why do you assume you’re the smartest in the room?
That attitude may be your doom.
It’s full of contradictions–
Well, so is independence.
Wait for it.

You and your words flooded my senses.
Your sentences left me defenseless.
You built me palaces out of paragraphs. You built cathedrals.

You told the whole world how you brought this girl into your life.
You and your words, obsessed with your legacy.
I’m searching and scanning for answers in every line, for some kind of sign.

I’ve believed in an Icarus,
and now he has flown too close to the sun.

If you win your independence, is that a guarantee for freedom?
Remind me, what are you looking for?

IV.
It’s still dark outside.

Come back to bed,
that would be enough.

We negotiate the terms of surrender.
What comes next?
You’ve been freed. You’re on your own. Do you have a clue what happens now?
We push away what we can never understand.

You knock me out, I fall apart.

I’ll make a million mistakes
but I’ll make it right for you,

if we lay a strong enough foundation.

Let me be a part of your narrative
in the story they will write someday

V.
Look around,
the feeling of freedom, of seeing the light
If we manage to get this right
together we can turn the tide
We have seen each other through it all,
and I’m not sorry.

There are moments when the words don’t reach.

He keeps changing the game,
he keeps winning anyway.

Love doesn’t discriminate, it takes and it takes.
I’m willing to wait for it.

We keep loving anyway, we rise and we fall and we break and we make our mistakes

I am the one thing I can control.
I am not falling behind or running late.
I am not standing still–
I’m lying in wait.

VI.
The war’s not done.
Oceans rise, empires fall
the sun comes up and the world still spins

Thoughts of you subside,
that never used to happen before.
History obliterates every picture it paints.

I don’t pretend to know the challenges you’re facing,
The worlds you keep erasing and creating in your mind.

I’m erasing myself from the narrative.

Let future historians wonder how I reacted
when you broke my heart this day.

You have torn it all apart
The world has no right to my heart

They don’t get to know what I said.
I’m burning the memories–
you forfeit all rights to my heart.

VII.
But I’m not afraid.

There are moments when you’re in so deep.
It feels easier to just swim down.

Every reaction’s an act of creation–
And if it takes fighting a war for us to meet,
it will have been worth it.

Are you ready for more yet?

Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now
Look at where you are
Look at where we started
The fact that we are alive is a miracle

Let this moment be the first chapter
Where you decide to stay.
That would be enough

Look out world,
That would be enough

I am on my way.
I’ll see you on the other side of the war.

Save your strength,
we are trying to do the unimaginable.
Just let me stay here by your side.

Raise a glass to freedom, they’ll tell the story of tonight.

We don’t need a legacy
We don’t need money
If I could grant you peace of mind,
if you could let me inside your heart.
The world will never be the same.
I’ll see you on the other side

’til we meet again
’til the world turns upside down–

and I could be enough,
and we could be enough,
that would be enough.