Clip-On Anthem

A tiny cassette fastened to the day,

it clipped the future onto denim seams,

and turned the schoolyard air into a play.

The plastic body hummed in private dreams,

a song too loud for something so contained,

yet lived inside a pocket full of beams.

Each button pressed released what was restrained,

a chorus spilling out from colored shell,

where childhood’s noise was carefully unchained.

It made the ordinary briefly swell,

a walk to class a soundtrack on repeat,

a world that only we could hear so well.

And though the device was small and incomplete,

it taught us how to carry sound along—

a portable and restless kind of beat.