Battle Cry

Money cannot buy 

All the love that's here tonight 

All the love that's here tonight 

It's just you and I 

So lift your hands toward the sky 

Lift your hands toward the sky

I asked you once, Whose song is that? What I meant to ask was who you had written it for. Instead, what I'd asked was a matter of possession, ownership. But the funny thing about songs, I've learned, is that once you release them into the air, they belong to no one and everyone at once. The melodies and harmonies weave into the fabric of life outside of you. It's the song on the radio when a boy learns that his friend was killed on duty, it's the song that the DJ plays when the high school sweethearts share their last dance at the senior prom, it's the song looped on repeat as a woman hits rock bottom, lying in bed and wallowing in self-loathing at how her life has turned out. Your songs, so personal and so vulnerable, become a part of another person's memory, a trigger that can both heal and hurt--depending on the circumstances.

Take the sun and you still grow / Lose the light and you still glow

As I hear those last chords rising in the darkened sky, I close the pages shut on us. The symphony of the night has already started to buzz with static, and I won't be able to hear you for much longer. In time, I will become nothing more than a ghost conjured by an acoustic trigger. I am translucent, and a crystal wind passes through me. I lock these memories in my chest, not because I fear you will lose them, but because from now on, you will write new ones--hundreds and thousands extending beyond the years I never had.

So sing with me your battle cry
Sing with me your battle cry

 --"Battle Cry" by Angel Haze ft. Sia