Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks Perform ‘Landslide’ Together for the Last Time
I took
my love and I took it down
She takes the stage and a tide of applause
roars in over the banks of the creaking hardwood.
My muscle fibers are lit fuses of firecrackers
except not from any cocaine this time.
These opening notes float from my fingers
like ghosts of themselves, wrap gently
around those rippling shawl-covered shoulders.
I
climbed a mountain and I turned around
Ah yes, I know this song so well.
My fingers are calloused in these strings.
I look at Stevie and she’s magic –
absolute dark matter magic
all breath of stars and splintering trachea.
Oh
mirror in the sky, what is love?
Her bangs have grown out and grayed –
her whole head a snow-covered hill.
A smudge of charcoal shadow like cigarette ash
conceals the purple constellation of veins
on her naked eyelids. I used to trace truth North
across them while she slept when we were young,
and my hands were gentler,
and this was our dream,
and we were in love.
I’m
getting older too
We did love each other,
didn’t we Stevie?When we’re up here, all my broken pieces reach
like veins of ivy toward your open window.
Tell me you still remember all the cars we slept in,
all the dives we headlined for free.
But it was just like this, wasn’t it? Me at your left hand,
tambourine to your chiffon thigh, and our wild eyes
devouring each other beneath the smoke of the opaque lights
I’ve
been afraid of changing ’cause I built my life
around you
The empire we created together
toppled around us like a house of cards.
The price, I guess, of having only my blunt hands
to build it with. When you sing, my aching lips long
for the buzz of your humming throat.
Even the wind quiets to listen. When you sing,
the bones of our love rise from a field of ash –
I wouldn’t take any of it back if it meant
I wouldn’t love you, once.
Still.
Every time you sing I am reminded why.
And
if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
My ghost will go on strumming in your shadows,
mouthing the words of these songs until they taste
like the yellowed creases of being in our back pockets
for too long. But not you, Stevie, fire that refuses
to be snuffed out. You will haunt me the rest of my days.
Your reflection like a recurring dream
in the landslide of my memories. The lavender incense
smoke of you curling around every mirror
I can’t meet my own eyes in.
Well
maybe the landslide will bring you down
