This Is A Fire Door Never Leave Open

(album: Left And Leaving - 2000)

Headlights race towards the corner of the dining room
And half illuminate a face before they disappear
You breathe in forty years of failing to describe a feeling
I breathe out smoke against a window
Trace the letters in your name

Our letters sound the same
Full of all our changing
That isn't change at all
All straight lines circle sometime

You said, "Somewhere, there's a box full of replacement parts
To all the tenderness we've broken or let rust away."
Somewhere, sympathy is more than just a way of leaving
Somewhere, someone says, "I'm sorry."
Someone's making plans to stay

So tell me it's okay
Tell me anything
Or show me there's a pull
Unassailable

That will lead you there from the dark alone
To benevolence that you've never known
Or you knew when you were four and can't remember

Where a small knife tears out those sloppy seams
And the silence knows what your silence means
And your metaphors, as mixed as you can make them
Are linked like days, together

I still hear trains at night when the wind is right
I remember everything
Lick and thread this string

That will never mend you or tailor more
Than a memory of a kitchen floor
Or the fire door that we kept propping open

And I love this place: the enormous sky
And the faces, hands that I'm haunted by
So why can't I forgive these buildings
These frameworks labeled home?

Headlights race towards the corner of the dining room
And half illuminate a face before they disappear