Tag: choice

 words of gratitude

Forever Sweet Caroline

By Tyler Lucas Mobley 

Don’t be surprised when the lady on the bench says into her phone,

“What do you mean my jet can’t land?” then tells her assistant next

to her to look up the flight authorization number, “no I’m here see

that’s unacceptable,” and she’ll go on bulldozing then garner 

sympathy from people with name tags knowing full well no one 

can relate to her problems. 

Fighting off expectations of a pocket full of money, happening

with such regularity in the occupied role, reality becomes another

check out. Glazed reproductions of the same interaction with

different faces, these trenches are hard to climb.

A bass line everyone knows, hands reach for other hands or

pull up a dress for a dance floor dash because they understand

it won’t play again. Inclined to soften the eyes to the memories 

being made before them. Mental barrier to how this band’s cover 

doesn’t hold up to the week before, when there’s cake, eat. 

Because once you may be asked, “Can you take us back to 

our rooms, we forgot our hats?” when they return in bucket hats 

with Turkish House Mafia stitched in you’ll find out the groom

is a DJ and witness years of ridicule for questionable taste come

full circle in a heartfelt gesture. “To the afterparty?” 

Discovering the woman to whom the lyric is directed, who for

decades the collective voices have congregated, will need your help 

and you’ll come running to her door to find a Kennedy out in the 

cold, prone to the same faults. Exchanging smiles and a set of keys, 

never a more endearing normal than from forever Sweet Caroline.