We’re only young once — “So scared of growing old/ I’m only good at being young.” -John Mayer Candy bar wrappers and Mountain Dew cans and packs of cigarettes we’d sneak down a Carolina back road. The days of our youth. You’re only seventeen once. The radio played I remember running through the wet grass, falling…

A 90’s pop-rock song taught me about death and moving on — The first time death blew its cold, violent wind through my forest I was 12. I soaked it in visually as my grandmother’s already small body withered into an unrecognizable mess of blankets and tubes hooked to beeping machines in a cold room. …

The King of Pop could make anyone feel like royalty — Somewhere in the awkward awakening of adolescence, a dramatic shift happens. You might think it’s puberty, but something else is at stake. Something greater than the force of burgeoning armpit hair and vocal cords that squeak at inopportune times. …

“Friends In Low Places” tells us getting over it just requires a few friends and a few drinks — In 1975, David Allan Coe wrote the perfect country song. Well, technically it was Steve Goodman, but the song “You Never Even Called Me By My Name” was released that year by Mr. Coe to mild radio acclaim. …

shell casings falling like hollow thoughts and prayers — Staring intently at this map 48 little countries with two more Perched unfairly at the lower left The ticking of the clock that we can hear the ticking of a bomb that we cannot Frays the nerves of silence Sandy Hook and Aurora have their own places in time, riddled with…

Free Fallin’ isn’t just a classic song, but a lesson in living — I want to get this out of the way early in this write-up of Each Year’s Best Song, 1989 edition. I’m writing about Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’, and I want to make sure we are all playing with the same deck of cards. We’re all in the same boat. It’s…

We’ll never grow closer to God by being fake — Conor O’Malley’s mom is dying. And there’s nothing he can do about it. Recently I saw a question on an online book forum. “What’s the saddest book?” Several answered A Monster Calls. I immediately picked it up that afternoon from the local library. In A Monster Calls, Conor O’Malley, a…

How your content begins matters just as much as how it ends — At the tender age of 15, I had no clue what this line meant: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times…” Those opening lines to Charles Dickens' famous novel Great Expectations are some of the most well-known lines in the world of literature. As a…