It’s not because we were listening to Notes On a Conditional Form, the 8th cut,
‘Jesus Christ 2005 God Bless America’
when Eliana said, Dinero, that’s a Spanish word.
What happened? We broke up hysterical peeing in our pants laughing in the car.
It’s not that I even know what a conditional form is.
A villanelle, maybe? Or, perhaps, the chorus of a rock pageant,
or even the way quarks dance on the tips of tongues in an America that has forgotten
how to write a song?
But when Eliana said, Dinero, that’s a Spanish word,
I knew America had not forgotten
and we took off in the car that went airborne and her sister, in the back seat–
Natalie, in the back seat—
had no idea what to do with herself so sang Taylor Swift
and everything was in a constant state of massage.
You can call a thing a perfect moment but usually there’s a fleck of spit
that gets in there and messes things up.
Not the case here.
Most days everything has something to do with The 1975
but not yesterday
when we were flying off the lip of Sunset Street
into the Boston skyline orange purple pink.
Jesus Christo look at us now, laughing into the clouds
before there was time to catch our breaths,
and this, my friends, must have been the conditional form of love
or the unconditional quality of love
that we all can fall into
when we are with our kids
and they say some crazy shit
the way the next day Eliana said,
Matty Healy should write a song called Dinero Dinero Dinero.

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Image: “Oddball section, Sound House Records, Troy, NY” by Daniel Nester