Love This

Nova, on the inside of the sleeve.

these are five songs about somebody who was never going to stay, and I want to be clear that I knew that the entire time.

people keep asking me if I'm okay, which is the same question he asked in room 9, and I did not have an answer then either. I am not going to explain the songs. they are already the explanation — that is what they are for. I write things down before I can say them out loud, and this is the first time I have let anybody read the notebook.

three of these were written in the car. one was written in a corner store at two in the morning while I waited for the guy to find batteries. one was written the morning after, which you can probably tell.

they are not in the order it happened. I tried it that way and it was worse. it turns out the way you actually remember a person is not a straight line, it is whichever part is loudest at the time, and at two in the morning it is never the part where it ended.

five songs, twenty-four minutes. it is called love this because that is what I kept saying, out loud, in the car, about a situation everyone around me could see was going to cost me something. I am leaving the title where it is.

no label. no manager. my name is on it because it is mine.

— n., 2022