PopText

Robyn - With Every Heartbeat

Published Thursday, March 15, 2007 by Abby.

It struck me one day, doodling idle post ideas in the back of an economics lecture. Station concourses and high school back steps; half-hearted phone calls and holiday apartments – the places and faces change, but a break-up is always the same. Love, you see, is a zero-sum game.

No matter how mutual it claims to be, regardless of the amicable smiles that get beamed about, somebody always loses. Somebody always hurts the most. Somebody always wins.

And. It. hurts. With. Every. Heartbeat.

Robyn knows she’s lost. Even her opening chords are laced with melancholy, the lines are dragged and dog-tired, stretched with the kind of weary resignation that only echoes when you’re close to collapse. And so it goes. One smile dimmer, one voice not quite so full of relief; we’ve all been there, either side, every side. We’ve all flicked our eyes away for safer ground, picked that public spot for minimal damage. We’ve all dug angry half-moons in our palms to keep back those tears, held ourselves together with nothing more than the simple intake of breath and a few silent prayers.

And oh, how we know this final refrain. Every strained syllable forced from her lips is short with desperate self-control. Half a gasp, the jaw clenched, yet still she clings to the pained string melody; kept afloat by the bubbling synth waves.

And. It. hurts. With. Every. Heartbeat.

Labels: broken hearts, economic theory, those ballroom dancers