I am sitting on the couch with my feet on the coffee table in a wrinkled tennis skirt after morning practice in the summer. The TV is tuned to VH1, and I am watching music videos holding a chocolate milkshake that I made, like I make every morning after practice, to watch this show.

Coldplay fades into view. This is a new band for me. They are British, and I have not seen this video before. I lean in, with my milkshake-covered spoon suspended over the glass, not having yet made it to my mouth, watching closely as their new single plays out,

     The Scientist.

Chris Martin’s eyes pop open and flash blue. His lips move forward mouthing the words to the song, but something is off. He is sucked up off the ground, and moves backwards while his face stays with the song. Backwards through events that he is singing about.

     Tell me you love me

     Come back and haunt me

     I want to rush to the sta-a-art

Milkshake forgotten, I lean into the TV. Chris moves like a reversing robot through the basketball court. Through the neighborhood. Up, through the woods. Un-circles a tree. Leaves are sucked back up into the branches around him. He passes over an old fence.

Chris moves past a girl sprawled face down in the weeds of a field, unmoving, and does not look at her.

He returns to the nearby car, back to his place in the driver’s seat. The squares of broken tempered windshield glass dance back into place. The girl lying in the field lifts up off the ground with the glass and is tucked back into the car. The dents in the metal are unmade as the rolls back up the hill and returns through the fence at the top. They swerve back into place on the road, and the girl is reanimated. They goin time back to the moment she unbuckles her seatbelt to get something trivial out of the backseat. The piano plays out the last few haunting notes of the song, and then it ends.

I cannot help but feel warned

Luciana, 23