Death Cab For Cutie - Tiny Vessels.
“Tiny vessels oozed into your neck and formed the bruises, that you said you didn’t want to fade, But they did, and so did I that day”
So let me tell you a story about this song. It’s long and personal so skip it if that’s not your sort of thing. I won’t be mad - honest! - but it’s what I think of whenever I hear this song.
Alexis and I were best friends in college - and best friends only, nothing ever happened between us. After college, we continued to hang out in between my periodic job hunting trips to the west and east coasts. She had an internship with an agency here in Detroit and I was living with my parents while back in Michigan. After work drinks happened a few times, we went to movies together, chatted online, etc. Then I received the job offer I was looking for in a place I wanted be so I picked up and moved to DC.
Over the course of the next 6 or 7 months, we flirted online during the workday and whenever we talked on the phone. When I was back in Michigan, we always found time to hang out. Finally, after taking her as a date to a wedding, we kissed on a playground we frequented in college.
Two weeks later, she had a trip planned to come visit me in DC. Alexis made a CD mix for me titled “District Visit Vol. I”.
That CD consisted of 18 songs, 7 of which were from The Stills “Logic Will Break Your Heart” album so you can immediately tell the tone of the mix. It was basically a bunch of love songs… except for the last one, which was Tiny Vessels.
She swears that if we didn’t have “the talk” that weekend, she was moving on and this was her way to tell me that… she couldn’t wait around forever for us to start dating. To this day, I make fun of her for putting this song on that album but I realize it would’ve been a pretty fitting farewell had things not gone the way they did. It also reminds me how close I came to not having the person I want to spend the rest of my life with around and because of that, I recognize it as love song.
