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 the 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 you 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