The Strong One

(album: Inner City Front - 1981)

Isn't it hard
To be the one who has to give advice?
Isn't it hard
To be the strong one?

I see the skyline blurred through the plastic on your back screen door
Not unlike the faces of the people who keep turning up in the places we go
The ones we'd never see if things weren't going so well
When I was a torn jacket hanging on the barbed wire
You cut me free
And sewed me up and here I am

Isn't it hard
To be the one whose phone rings all day everyday?
Isn't it hard
To be the strong one?

Mouths move without vision, without regard for consequences
Eyes fill with memories poisoned by intimate knowledge of failure to love
Sometimes, sometimes, doesn't the light seem to move so far away?
You help your sisters, you help your old lovers
You help me but who do you cry to?

'Cause isn't it hard
To be the one who gathers everybody's tears?
Isn't it hard
To be the strong one?