Lia was pleasantly bemused by Megan’s appreciation of her work. Megan had forced her to lift her gaze from the top of her Vans and look out at the world. Shutting her bedroom door behind her, Lia kicked off her shoes and pulled the folded poem for Exene out of the back pocket of her jeans, trying to picture how the words had struck Megan as she’d read them:
Appearing in a halo of pale yellow light,
Exene, a hellion-voiced angel,
descended from moonbeams to guide us at night.
This world of anger and wars—
so much disquieting noise
we press our ears against cold windows
and wait for her cry
for the glass-shattering voice
of the one who understands why we’re
so sad, and lonely, and out of our minds.
We wait in desperation to hear her new songs,
played fast, thrashed out like fire,
