“The Carousel Between My Ribs”
Since Saturday morning, YUNGBLUD’s “Zombie” has been living rent-free in my head, playing on an endless loop like a confession I’m not ready to stop hearing. I already know this song will be all over my Spotify Wrapped at the end of the year, and I couldn’t care less. Every time it starts, it pulls me somewhere else, not just into its lyrics, but into a memory I never actually had. I wish I could listen to “Zombie” on a clunky yellow Walkman, roaming the tiled halls of a ’90s mall with headphone foam pressed to my ears, smelling the warm cinnamon sugar drifting from the food court.
In my mind’s eye, I’m that emo kid no one asked for, wearing thrift-store plaid and scuffed sneakers, walking slowly past glowing store windows. The carousel in the center spins lazily, lights flickering off the mirrored panels, reflecting fragments of strangers’ faces like the restless, aching carousel between my ribs, turning and turning with every beat of the song. His voice doesn’t just sing, it haunts. It cracks open the silence and spills out the words I’ve never been able to bring into the light. It’s tugging at a version of me I wasn’t allowed to be back then, the one who would’ve worn their feelings loud and unfiltered. Instead, I learned to hide the storms inside, to keep the mess neatly folded away. Now, “Zombie” lets me unfold it.
The lyrics don’t flinch from pain, they stare at it. “If I was to talk about the words / They would hurt… So if you were to ask about the pain / I would lie.” It’s a confession I understand in my bones, the way you know the shape of a scar without looking at it. Then comes the chorus, over and over: “Would you even want me looking like a zombie? / Would you even want me, want me, want me?” That question feels like walking past my reflection in the mall glass, blurred by movement, by distance, by the fear that the raw, stripped-down version of me might be too much to want.
Back in my imagined mall, the carousel keeps spinning in my periphery, an endless emotional loop like the carousel between my ribs that won’t stop turning no matter how many times I try to look away. I don’t know if I’d have been brave enough to feel this much out loud as a teenager. Maybe that’s why I keep hitting repeat now, because every time the chorus swells, something inside me loosens. And maybe, in this endless loop, between the music and the memory, I’m finally learning how to stand still and let myself feel.
