Refugee

Remember through poetry how far you’ve come with the months and moments of 2021.

The 1975 doesn’t shy away from cultural commentary; rather, it focuses its music directly on the United States’ most politically polarizing subjects. The group covers topics from the disproportionate incarceration rate among Black men to the Syrian refugee crisis.

I found out on the train ride home from Lake Tahoe, where I had spent the weekend. In honor of him, I listened to his music on shuffle, old and new, Highway Companion to Damn the Torpedoes, and watched golden fields of fried grass and stark black cows run past my window. “Square One” consoled me as I traced streams into orange forests. “Rebels” scored the train’s trek across a Sacramento bridge. Tom Petty was dead, and I wasn’t crying. I was remembering.