The Most Romantic Nonromantic Night Ever

Back when Millennium Park was just being built, I met up with [censored] to hang out. We’d been having trouble acting normal around each other, which is natural when you’ve both separately broken each other’s hearts.

We walked through the park and up to the Pritzker Pavilion, then in pieces. The shapes that make up the pavilion are jutting curves of metal, and in the moonlight of this particular evening, the shapes made the whole place look like a robot dinosaur graveyard. Soft yellow light cast down from street lamps, and traffic from Lake Shore Drive made a swooshing noise in the background. It was a cool night, so there were many shivers of delight and breeze.

We walked among the curves of metal, navigating the construction site. We’d walk together, then walk apart, and come upon each other turning a corner. The night, atmosphere, and setting were enough to make one weak in the knees, and I thought that maybe a night so ephemeral and beautiful might finally be the salve for the scars of a breakup. All together it was nearly a dream.

I know we were both thinking of a song called My Favourite Chords by the Weakerthans. The whole night still feels mildly tragic, but the most awe came from knowing we were thinking about the same song.

The reason I thought of this was that I was wearing a skirt a lot like the skirt I’m wearing today.

  1. They’re tearing up streets again.
    They’re building a new hotel.
    The Mayor’s out killing kids to keep taxes down,
    and me and my anger sit folding a paper bird,
    letting the curtains turn to beating wings.
    Wish I had a socket-set to dismantle this morning.
    And just one pair of clean socks.
    And a photo of you.
    When you get off work tonight,
    meet me at the construction site,
    and we’ll write some notes to tape to the heavy machines,
    like “We hope they treat you well. Hope you don’t work too hard.
    We hope you get to be happy sometimes.”
    Bring your swiss-army knife, and a bottle of something,
    and I’ll bring some spraypaint and a new deck of cards.
    Hey I found the safest place to keep all our tenderness.
    Keep all our bad ideas. Keep all our hope.
    It’s here in the smallest bones, the feet and the inner-ear.
    It’s such an enormous thing to walk and to listen.
    I’d like to fall asleep to the beat of you breathing
    in a room near a truckstop on a highway somewhere.
    You are a radio. You are an open door.
    I am a faulty string of blue christmas lights.
    You swim through frequencies.
    You let that stranger in, as I’m blinking off and on and off again.
    We’ve got a lot of time.
    Or maybe we don’t, but I’d like to think so, so let me pretend.
    These are my favourite chords.
    I know you like them too.
    When I get a new guitar, you can have this one and sing me a lullaby.
    Sing me the alphabet.
    Sing me a story I haven’t heard yet.

  2. This reminds me of that old Joni Mitchell song that goes, “They paved paradise / and put up a privately-funded public park and concert pavilion with interactive art installations and postmodern bandshell.”

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