Heartbreak Hotel
My dad always thought I looked like Lisa Marie Presley. He was obsessed with Elvis, an Italian immigrant, who could never quite pronounce “Presley” without it sounding like “Pretzel.” I was five years old when Elvis died. my parents mourned and mourned, I thought he was my uncle. I screamed whenever my father put on an Elvis record. I thought if I listened to Elvis I would die, too, or my parents would die, or my brother, picked off like guitar strings if they were in earshot of Heartbreak Hotel. When I became a teenager, I fell in love with a dead man, James Dean. I went on a Manhattan walking tour when I was sixteen. The guide took us to all of James Dean’s haunts: night clubs, restaurants, and his abandoned apartment, where I ripped off a piece of wallpaper and put it in my pocket. A woman on the tour said, “My friend and I think you look like Lisa Marie Presley.” She had a tattoo of Elvis on her arm. That night in Penn Station, waiting for a train to take me home, a drunk man fell on the third rail, it shook him like a possession. Heartbreak Hotel was playing on the 6 o’clock news this morning. Lisa Marie Presley died, and now you’re ready to go. Your backpack strapped to your back, I watch you walk onto the platform, blowing kisses at my childhood triggers. Published in Bluebird Word |
Artist: "Jenni" Guinevere von Sneeden, @guinevere.von.sneeden
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