Lyric Vent | "Pool" - Samia

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Music helps us to discuss and process the hardest of feelings 💜💕

Reflection on 'Pool' -

Samia’s “Pool” feels like a quiet unraveling—like sitting still in a moment you know won’t last, trying to memorize every detail before it slips away. The line “Do I have left with my dog 'til I start forgetting sh-t?” hit me like a punch to the chest. It’s not just about memory loss, it’s about the fear of losing something so precious that even forgetting a single moment feels like betrayal.

I think about my dog Harley, my champagne shihpoo with beautiful eyes and a silly underbite. He’s been with me through everything—trauma, depression, nights I didn’t think I’d survive. He sleeps beside me, comforts me through nightmares, and reminds me that love can be soft and unconditional. Harley saved my life. And the thought of losing him terrifies me.

Samia’s lyrics echo that fear:

“How long do you think we can sit here / Before we have to move?”

That’s how I feel when I’m lying next to Harley or watching him chase frogs in the backyard. I want to freeze time, to stay in this moment where he’s still here, still mine. But I know life moves. Dogs age. Memories fade. And I’m scared that one day I’ll wake up and not remember the way his fur feels against my cheek, or the sound of his paws tapping across the floor.

I think about that line, and I feel the panic rise. How long? How long until his paws stop padding across the floor? Until he isn’t there to make me laugh? Until I reach for him in the night and find only air?

Samia sings, “Lovin’ you is bigger than my head,” and I get it. Loving Harley is bigger than logic, bigger than words. It’s instinct. It’s survival. It’s the way I learned to keep breathing when everything else told me not to. When I was drowning in grief, in fear, in the weight of being called names that aren’t mine—he was the one who reminded me who I am. Not a mistake. Just Cal. Just Cal. Just a human with a dog who saved their life.

“Try to breathe under the water through this tube,” Samia says, and I think of all the times I’ve felt like I was underwater. Like I was gasping for air in a house that didn’t feel safe. Like I was trying to explain myself to people who didn’t want to understand. Like I was holding my breath through church sermons, through family dinners that felt like battlegrounds. Harley was the tube. The lifeline. The reason I didn’t sink.

And now I’m terrified of losing him.

“Is it too much to ask?” she repeats, over and over, and I feel that desperation in my bones. Is it too much to ask for one more year? One more night curled up together. One more moment where I can bury my face in his fur and pretend the world is kind?

I know the answer. I know nothing lasts forever. Samia knew it too, sitting by a stranger’s pool in Texas, staring at the moon and trying to hold onto a fleeting feeling. “How long do you think we can sit here before we have to move?” she asks. And I want to scream, Forever. Please, let it be forever.

But it won’t be. One day, Harley will be gone. And I’ll be left with memories that feel like dreams. I’ll try to remember the way he smelled, the way he snored, the way he looked at me like I was the whole world. And I’ll be scared that I’m forgetting.

The song’s outro spirals through questions:

“How much longer 'til it's midnight? / Are my legs gonna last? / Is it too much to ask?”
It mirrors the way my brain loops when I’m anxious—asking questions that don’t have answers, trying to prepare for grief before it arrives. Is it too much to ask for Harley to live forever? For me to never forget the way he saved me?