Leaving Rhode Island: The Music Coming Down

There’s a party in the hills

I’m not invited to

I sit in a car drinking beer

Listening to the music

Coming down the hill

Mom, I’m not coming home

Because I have big prospects here

Because I have parties to go to

And people to see

Trevor, the guy who got a pat on the back

Just for packing up his shit

And getting out

Why do we congratulate people

Before they’ve actually done anything?

You’re leaving the state?

Good for you

You’re getting married?

Good for you

Having a kid?

What a great idea

Nobody says—

Yeah, but what if he fucks up the kid

Or the marriage falls apart

Or he moves somewhere

And nothing happens

And he’s still a loser

Then what?

Nobody’s there to like your status then, huh?

We just want the beginnings of things

We don’t really want to know how things end

We tell ourselves we do

Because when somebody screws up the ending

We feel cheated

We feel like we wasted our time on them

Or whatever it is they were showing us

So they have to be clever

And unique

And give us an ending

That seems both satisfying and true

Even though, in the end—in the real end

There’s very little that’s satisfying

And it’s precisely because it’s true

A man drinks a beer

In his car

At the bottom of a hill

And listens to music

And listens to the laughter

Of other people

Having a good time

Without him

And he wonders about the ending

His ending

He’s pretty sure it’s not in Rhode Island

With his Mom

And his old high school friends

And a lifetime of people asking

‘Why’d you come back?’

The pressure of it’s killing him

I mean, really

Really killing him

Nailing the ending

How the hell do you do that?