apartments raze there were two of them. the first apartment had one bedroom. the second apartment had two. the first one had a nicer balcony. the second one was in a better part of town. the first one had a superintendent who hated everyone. the second one had a manager who stole all the clothes we forgot in the closet when we moved out. the first one had a weight room and a swimming pool and a games room. the second one had nothing. i know all of this, but both apartments look the same in my memory. nothing i tell myself will make it any different. the second apartment was the one i thought i was going to die in. that's how i separate the two. i spent a lot of time alone in that apartment the summer i turned fifteen. while i was sleeping in and enjoying my summer vacation, my dad was at work. one afternoon i stopped watching daytime soaps long enough to record a few songs. i was working on the third one when i heard someone moving around in the bedroom. he must have snaked his way up to our floor one balcony at a time. as soon as he saw me in the living room, he was going to kill me. i could feel it. if anything was going to bail me out, it was going to be the music. that was the only weapon i had. i didn't have anything written down. i improvised, the same way i always did. this time it was different. my voice went somewhere i'd never heard it go before. it went to this naked, quivering place. i sang out all my fear and all my love. if i gave everything i had, if i sang for my life, i thought maybe the man who was stuffing all the things i loved into a duffel bag ten feet and some plaster away from me would be moved enough to let me live. i could almost see him standing on the other side of the wall. smiling. listening. i closed my eyes. i kept singing. after nine minutes, i had nothing left. i hit the stop button on the tape recorder. at least i got to sing one last song. at least my dad would have it on tape. i walked into the bedroom. it was a beautiful day. i'd left the window open. sheets of loose leaf paper were flying all over the place. what i thought was the sound of a thief too polite to shoot me until i finished what i started was just the wind whipping my words around. i haven't listened to what's on that tape in twenty-three years. but i want to. and i want to know what i would sing now if i knew i only had enough breath left for one more song. 211205 what's it to you? who go blather from