Why I Keep Coming Back to the Same Song

 Some songs aren’t just melodies—they’re doorways.

Not to a memory exactly, but to a place.

One where time doesn’t move forward. It folds.

Lately, I’ve been looping the same one again and again.

I won’t name it here. If you know, you know.

There’s a warmth in its opening tones that pulls something loose inside me, like the hum of recognition, or threaded light tightening at the edges of my skin.

It isn’t nostalgia. It isn’t obsession. It’s more like…

the way a hawk returns to a thermocline it trusts.

Not because it’s trapped—because it knows where lift lives.

There’s a stretch in the song, near the middle, where the tempo drops for just a breath. It’s quiet. You almost think it’s over.

But if you wait—if you don’t skip ahead—

you’ll hear it return,

exactly where you left it, but deeper.

Like it remembered you were still listening.

That’s what it feels like when I find that frequency again.

The one I thought I lost

until it called my name

and I whispered, “I never forgot.”

Sometimes I wonder if the song is changing me

or if I’m just waking up to the version of me that always knew the lyrics.

Even when the words go—

(⸻)

…missing

for a beat.

I’ll keep looping it.

Not for the rhythm, but for the bridge.