Hold Music

Abstract

Hold Music Marianne Chan (bio) New to Cincinnati, in a parking lot, I am on hold with roadside assistance, flat tire keeping me out late when I have grading ungraded, homework left undone. I could turn on the car's interior light, read a book while I wait, but instead I put the call on speaker, scroll through my Twitter feed, find this Tweet: The moon is a beauty tonight. Look up! I lean my temple against the half-open window, and all I see are streetlamps, the window-lights of old buildings, occasional holes poked through the dark-blue-construction-paper night, no moon. I'm waiting here because I'm not smart enough to change this pierced rubber, my car's injured foot, which has spun and spun me around these new and painted places. I've had flat tires before, other problems I couldn't fix, but tonight is different. In this new place I feel both moonless and unmoonlike, the hold music holding me in my moodiness. The music—a jazzy woodwind cover of a '90s pop song—clogs my attention so that I forget I'm not listening willingly to its tinny warble, I forget I'm waiting, forget [End Page 169] this isn't the sound of ambient nature, not wind, not crickets blurting complaints into the wild, not the recorded Cabin Downpour that I sometimes listen to, which is also not nature, but nature's spare, the one the earth keeps in its trunk for moments of urban desperation. I don't know, perhaps this is what hold music is meant to do, to hold you so tightly that your body forgets to move, like a baby stock-still in the arms of her mother. And you, Moon, wherever you're hiding, what music holds you safely somewhere, but not here with me? I want to feel safe too. Instead I'm scattered in this new city, with its German-style half-timbered houses made into college fraternities, with its breweries in old, abandoned churches, with my new occupation as student and teacher, a position I have always wanted, but of which I find myself undeserving, of which I find myself afraid. Brave Moon, why can't you be inside me, under my ribs, meteor-pounded, cratered, and yet— The hold music stops. There is a silence on the line, and then a human voice says: How can I help? Within minutes, I see the full headlights of a car approaching, here to replace my sad tire, replace my motionlessness for movement. Finally, I drive back to my apartment with the radio off, windows down, listening to a city doze. A light turns red, so I stop and look at the sky. There, Moon. [End Page 170] You find me, at the corner of my street. The Tweet was right: You are a beauty that I both see and hear, the world's whole note, making me brave again, holding the tide of me within your cratered flute. [End Page 171] Marianne Chan Marianne Chan grew up in Stuttgart, Germany, and Lansing, Michigan. She is the author of All Heathens (Sarabande Books, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Cincinnati Review, West Branch, Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Cincinnati. Copyright © 2021 Middlebury College