Seamstress for the Band

How To Make a Comeback:

It starts with being ashes, being willing to exist after you die.
Drink wine with your friends in the open air, even if it is too cold, even when it is too hot.
Raise a glass of water up and place it on your head and have long conversations while keeping it there.
Forget that it is there.
Then, catch it in your palm without spilling a drop.
Sleep a lot.
When you cry, let your eyes stay black with mascara like you are part of a tribe.
Let your mouth stay dry like it is a desert.
Let your hands be a mask for your face like you are part of a tribe.

Once you can feel your bones again, and the color of fever is on your cheeks,
Leave.
Fly somewhere even warmer, where you do not know a soul,
Where you are a stranger, and everyone else is part of a tribe.
Wear a green dress and walk into a room like you belong there,
Like you are your own tribe.

Tell your stories again and again.
Tell someone about the time you got your sunglasses caught in your hair
That it took five friends to lie around you in bed for an hour and free you strand by strand.
They will understand that you are here to disentangle yourself.
When they ask what is tangled in your hair,
Tell them birds, tell them kites, tell them your eyes.

Make a home in a hotel room.
Put milk in the refrigerator, but don’t buy bread.
Drink coffee so weak that it tastes like your last kiss.
Hang your dresses in a row, and stack your books like they are your tribe.
Keep a pile of ashes outside your door where you have put out fires.
Hang beads around the neck of your lamp because you have made this room your own.

When you can walk out on to the sidewalk,
Knowing which direction leads where,
You will know it is time to leave again.
You will pack your bags, but leave everything unfolded.
You will put milk that will be left to spoil in the refrigerator.
You will pull your hair back from your face,
And talk to a man who will mark your body with black ink
Whatever symbol means you have scattered your ashes and are ready to rise.
He will wipe the blood from your arm, and you will see that it is red again.
You will feel your bones move under his hands.
Your arm will be a totem, a resurrection, an initiation into a tribe.
You will know you are alive again
When you have no more stories for strangers,
And many for your friends who say:
Come back. We have wine.
The air is not too cold or too warm, but it moves.
Here are your eyelashes,
Here is a glass your size.
We have your hands. Show us your eyes.

MP3: Owen Pallett- Export 3 (The great elsewhere)

posted by holly.