At Peace

(album: Empty Days & Sleepless Nights - 2011)

He just sat at home with the bottle. His mother had turned into a skeleton of herself, no longer even able to get out of the house to fill up her arms; he had to make the runs for her. He didn't mind anymore, he knew how she felt. Anything to take away the pain of losing someone. She would just sit with her rosary, rolling the beads in her tiny hands. Every time he left the house for his mother, or for another bottle, he would stand on that dock and watch the ocean like he used to. Scream out to no one for the coward to come home so he could make him pay. And every night he would start to fade with every hour that passed. He would smoke his last cigarette and find himself in the house in the morning not knowing how he got home. And one morning he woke to his mother and her rosary beads no longer hanging on the bedpost. You've got to find her. Your mother ain't fit to be alone. Her rosary beads are gone, there's only one place she'd be. The sun is nearly up, put your jacket back on and walk down the street. Feel the wind start to shift, cold and biting. Just like everything that's changed. When you do find her, take the only family that you've got back to home. Head down, walk through the crowds and the families downtown. You jealous bitter old man, it's just yourself you can't stand. The man that took away your wife, coward that left you behind, you would kill them both if you could. Head down, cigarette in hand. Concrete, cold brick and sand to the place where she prays, where she suffers her days. Sleepless nights with the dirt when the addiction hurts. Up to that old white oak door church. And that's where you find her in that last pew. You touch her cold hand, your mother is gone. In front of her God, needle in her arm. The family plot will be filled. The perfect ending to a tragedy. Put her in the cold wet ground. Finally at peace with her husband now. And you've lost all will. Hours strain, but months pass alone with your gun. Blue-collar shipyard, your days have gone. Lost it all for the promise of a normal life. All taken from you when you lost your wife. So you sit in that chair, waiting for death, barrel to your head.